


Up in the Air, Junior Birdman

by Thassalia



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Camping, F/M, Glorious 1970s ballads, Post-Avengers (2012), Slow Burn, WIP Big Bang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-07-28
Packaged: 2018-12-07 23:44:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11634429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thassalia/pseuds/Thassalia
Summary: The Avengers go camping. It's better than building a tower out of office furniture.





	1. Boot Camp

**Author's Note:**

> This story started out a zillion years prior as a prompt response. The request was "Bruce and Natasha and singing" and I really wanted to answer it but could only envision it if they were all around a campfire. And then it seemed totally logical to make them all camp. I wrote a bunch, then stalled out, then shared it with [feldman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/feldman/pseuds/feldman) who told me it wasn't terrible. 
> 
> And I have been trying to finish it since then. So, the WIP Big Bang 2017 was the perfect chance to just finish it.
> 
> Then, the wonderful [Red Bess Rackham](http://archiveofourown.org/users/red_b_rackham/pseuds/red_b_rackham) created wonderful art for it.
> 
> You can see her art [here.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11639127)

The fight has been more frustration than aggression. They’re outnumbered, nearly outmatched and Natasha is bone weary. They’ve been going all day, moving between burroughs, trying to contain the threat, struggling to find a seemingly absent motivation.

The army of golden warriors is eerily silent, blank-eyed bodies armed with spears, animated by strange magic. They’ve been pouring through the streets in a wave. Most are easily knocked down, but every tenth or so proves both more resilient and dangerous. They’re the ones with intent, golden hands reaching out for strangers. When those warriors take hold of someone, a paralytic is released, dropping the victim to the ground. Several of those victims have died as their hearts stopped.

While the bulk of the army moves like puppets in tin suits, there’s humanity in the eyes of that tenth soldier. More than animated tin, they’re people, controlled somehow.

Cap, Stark, and Thor have finally triangulated the last full regiment near the Brooklyn Bridge, while Clint and Wilson are picking off the strays who’d crossed ahead.

It all took longer than necessary, a series of bickering, pissy disagreements degenerating into miscommunications that nearly got Stark run over by a municipal van. Clint’s sporting a shiner, and her calf aches like a muscle perpetually cramped.

Natasha has been running point on a smaller group, but she’s out of ammo and doesn’t want to let any of the warriors get close enough to risk contact. She’s weighing her odds, ducking and weaving, lashing out and breaking what she can while wishing for an extended reach when the last of her bites shorts out the closest warrior.

They’re still coming, but she grabs his spear as he falls, wincing at the static that burns through her, but she doesn’t have time to shake it off. She thrusts forward, stabbing through soldier after soldier. They’re crowding around her and she’s starting to get sloppy, fighting for focus, when Hulk drops from above.

He smashes through the ranks,crushing tearing mashing, a boot amongst ants. Most crumple, but there were several of the humanoids among the army. One grabs at the Hulk--brave if that’s an accurate description. Hulk crushes its throat. It screams: wrenching and pained. None of them have screamed before.

She can’t truly mourn them, but it's startling and when Hulk has disposed of the rest, he looks to her, gaze darting around until he's satisfied then throws his head back and howls.

Nat holds out her hand. He grunts his displeasure, but returns the gesture. It’s been a long day for him too, and while the paralytics don’t knock him out, they’ve left discolored patches on his thick skin. He’s scrubbing and scratching at his arms, clearly uncomfortable.

“I promise that we can help with that,” she says, “but not now. Sun’s getting low.”

And it was.

She turns away as he transforms.

***

Bruce comes back to himself in the midst of golden bodies. He looks around, sees destruction but no blood, just broken suits.

Relief staggers him and he stumbles, catches himself, hands on his knees. Natasha is a few feet away, holding a golden spear, waiting him out. His chest opens. 

It's the juxtaposition, maybe. Her pale face, the red of her hair, the tac suit fitted like skin, the dirt on her cheek, the spear. The way she holds herself like she's the barricade the enemy will have to breach and she's immovable.

She's so damned beautiful in that strength. The spear just adds to it. A warrior goddess, although he’s a little embarrassed by that analogy, knowing how much she’d hate it. 

Natasha cocks her head and reality rushes back, even as a hint of hysteria twists his mouth. She looks like nothing so much as hope. Perhaps this won't be the horror his whipsaw snatches of memory are suggesting. Perhaps the other guy just growled and smashed and made way.

Perhaps he didn't murder and maim.

Then Bruce looks down. 

In front of him, stiff metallic features have relaxed into the slack face of a boy not much out of adolescence. His chest is a mangled wreck, although still golden. 

Bruce sinks to his knees. His gut roils, burning welts on his skin standing out amongst the dirt but he can’t bring himself to care. 

Death then. Of course.

“I didn’t know,” he starts, and swallows hard.

His throat is so thick, bile and fear and loathing, voice so low he’s not sure she heard him, or that he wanted her to.

But then Natasha is kneeling beside him, hand wrapping around the back of his neck. Her touch is water in a desert. He feels unworthy of it, can’t move from her absolution. She tilts him towards her, and he lets her, so weak and so grateful.

He pushes his head against her shoulder, wraps his shaking hand around her hip, sinking into that warm hold on his neck.

“We’re okay,” she says, and he sees boots a few meters away. Knows they’re Clint’s.

“Doc?” he says, but Bruce doesn’t respond. He feels weak, helpless, horrified. 

“No one could have saved them,” she says. “But we still did our duty. We made it better. At least for now.”

***

“It’s not actually gold,” Stark says, handing her the spear.

“Obviously,” Natasha says.

He shrugs. “Thought the alloy breakdown would give us some info, but mostly, it’s just a lightweight metal. The real mystery is the color. It’s not painted. But my interest has waned.” Stark leaves.

“Well, it’s mine now. Whatever it is.”

Bruce leans against his lab table. “So, what are you going to do with a spear?”

“Hunt boar?”

He barks out a laugh. He’s been quieter than normal the past few days, and she doesn’t want to cajole him. He's allowed to process his role in their missions however he needs to.

Still, she wishes there were something she could say. Since there’s not, she just keeps showing up, quietly checking in. He takes her to coffee, to the place with the real whipped cream. She brings him a series of ridiculous tiny notebooks from the bespoke paper goods store that Steve can’t stay away from--he's addicted to the wall of pens.

Bruce reaches back, switching off his monitor. He holds up a miniature notebook embossed with golden fists they've turned into the restaurant log. “Have you eaten?”

She shakes her head.

“Let me buy you dinner,” he says. 

“Where?”

He fiddles with his glasses. “Steve and Clint went to Red Rooster last weekend.”

She rolls the base of the spear in a circle on the floor. “You want to go to Harlem?” She doesn’t let her dubiousness creep in.

“I want…” he huffs out a breath. “I haven’t been back since...the incident. And I…” he shrugs. “Maybe I want to see that things are reparable.”

“This a foray, or just another way to punish yourself?”

He waves her off, “Nevermind. It’s fine, don’t worry. We’ll go to the German place. You can have Chicken Cordon Bleu. Again.”

It’s such a small thing to ask, this tentative geographical sortie. Maybe it's even healthy on his part. Recovery, not condemnation. Doubtful, knowing Bruce. But possible. She can give him the benefit of the doubt, hope it will encourage him to do the same. “No, we’ll go. But I want Sylvia’s if we’re trekking out there.”

Bruce rolls his eyes, something softening, the tick in his jaw ebbing. “Call Clint and Maria then, we’ll make it a party.”

~*~

The food at Sylvia’s is good, even if conversation circles back to the fight earlier in the week.

“I’m just saying it was sloppy,” Hill soaks up the rest of her greens with her fried cornbread and Clint grimaces. “It’s not training. You’ve all had enough training. It’s...synergy. Unless the threat is life or death, you all get sloppy. And petulant. Teamwork has to be second nature, even if it’s for a beer run.”

Clint quirks his mouth. “We’ve got too many flyers, not enough buyers.” He reconsiders, “Or maybe it’s the opposite. When no one’s likely to die, everyone’s got an opinion and no one wants to fall in line.”

He looks at Bruce, “Present company excluded.”

“At least in this incarnation,” Bruce acknowledges, arm slung casually along the back of Nat’s chair. “We all know it’s not true for the other guy.”

His amused smile sours briefly, and he rubs his thumb over his bottom lip. Natasha finds herself a little transfixed, the slide and pull of expression and touch. He’s more at ease than she’d expected tonight, if still quiet. Taking it all in. Of course, eating with the three of them can be a spectator sport. 

Soldiers of different stripes, all of who have a tendency to shovel in food like someone’s going to take it away. Or rather, someone’s going to give them an assignment and prevent them from seeing another plate for a good long time.

“He’s better than Stark half the time,” Clint counters.

“True enough,” Hill agrees.

Natasha just keeps looking at Bruce, speculative. His tone is mild. There’s no anguish but she can see the dismissal of their point forming.

Maria is eyeing the rib he has left. He tilts the basket towards her, and she snags it. 

“Hulk’s good with clear direction, not so much with a free for all.” Licking sauce off her fingers when the meat is gone, she dips her napkin in her water glass.

Bruce has his glasses off, a shoulder raised in tension.

“He likes Steve,” Natasha says. “Or rather, he likes Tony, and he listens to Steve when there’s a clear delineation of roles and directives.”

“That doesn't mean he’ll always do it.”

“Kind of the point Hill is making. The guarantee isn't there for anyone. And that's a problem. Sure, Hulk cuts a wide swath, but it’s not like we haven’t all fucked it up a time or two.”

The waitress drops off the dessert menu, and Clint groans.

Bruce is the only one who orders.

The waitress comes back with coffee, and Natasha stirs sugar into her mug. “The lullaby is making a difference,” she says. “I know you don't trust it, but he's responding.”

Bruce’s jaw is tight. He ignores Maria’s speculative eyebrow, but he gives Natasha a slight nod of acknowledgement. This fight is long-standing and she won’t cede her ground. If she’s willing to take the risk, he’ll damn well better acknowledge that it’s worthwhile.

When they bring his bread pudding, Bruce makes a show of pulling it towards himself. Natasha leans into his space to steal a bite anyway, unimpressed by his growl.

“She’ll take you down over dessert, doc,” Clint says, chewing on his ice. “I’d just give it to her.”

“Should have ordered your own,” he says to her, tone full of mock chastisement.

“It tastes better when it’s yours,” she says. He gives her this look under his lashes, sly. She's been forgiven. She steals another spoonful, taking her time pulling the sweetness off her spoon.

“Of course it does,” he says softly.

“When I was a kid,” Maria says, “and my brothers and I weren't getting along, my mom’d kick us all out to spend a week in the woods with my dad. She'd pack up the car and tell us to fix our shit.”

“So that's your solution?” Clint pours more creamer into his cup, lifting it towards his mouth with fingers spread around the rim.

“It's a solution,” she says.

They stroll leisurely to the train to work off some of the meal, Hill and Clint walking in front, the easy bickering a testament to decades of working together.

Bruce has his hands shoved in his pockets, but he bumps Natasha with his elbow. She bumps him back, nearly pushing him off the sidewalk.

She can feel the rich chuckle of his laughter vibrate in her chest, and he pulls a hand free, tangles his fingers with hers, thumb rubbing along the inside of her wrist just long enough for heat to tingle through her, before he drops her hand.

“Thank you,” he says softly, without looking at her. “For tonight.”

She brings the sense memory of that touch to bed with her, the way her skin had felt alight, her head buzzy, a reversal of the heart in her throat moments of transforming the Hulk back to Bruce, of asking for that exchange.

With that touch along her wrist, she was the one considering transformation.

**A Week Later**

“That’s it!” Hill slams her hand down on the table, which actually does cease the bickering over who should have done what in dealing with the Golden Army. “We’re going camping.”

Stark is the first to react. “Nope.”

“Yes,” she says, and stands up. “We’re going to camp. We’re going to retreat, and do organized activities and bonding exercises and eat marshmallows and you all will fucking learn something out there in the woods, or by God, I will burn this tower down. I will not listen to one more ‘no I didn’t, yes you did, why doesn’t anyone do what I tell them’ argument.”

“I don’t sleep outside.”

“It’s not outside, Stark, it’s a tent.”

“No one else objects?”

Steve raises a tentative hand. “I’ve never been camping. Slept rough in the war, but never as,” he pauses, “A recreational activity. What are we supposed to learn from this?”

It’s the sincerity that stops the rest of them, even if it is piled on a little thick. No one’s willing to call him on it.

Natasha answers, “Maria thinks us being out in nature without any kind of technology will make us nicer people.”

“No, I think it will make you listen to each other. Well, I think out in the woods you can yell to your heart’s content, but you’ll still have to work together to feed yourselves and to not get eaten by bears.”

Steve raises his hand again. “Bears?”

“No one’s getting eaten by bears,” Natasha says.

“There are bears?” Thor sounds delighted.

Maria sighs. “Show of hands, who has camped before? For fun.”

Bruce’s hand goes up, as, reluctantly does Clint’s.

Maria sounds annoyed. “Romanoff.”

“You said for fun.”

“Explain camping,” Thor demands.

“You sleep in a shelter you bring with you, and you cook over a fire. Often, you have to gather your own food by hunting or fishing. No electricity. You tell ghost stories. You swim in a lake if there is one. You cook things on sticks. There’s beer. Sometimes singing. In my family, football, though I’ve heard tell of frisbee.”

Thor is nodding along like it makes sense. Steve has an expression on his face that says dubious, but open.

“That is delightful,” says Thor, “although more like a survival exercise than a game. When I wish to experience nature, I visit my hunting lodge deep in the mountains. It is rustic, but still fitting for rulers of Asgard. I have slept under the stars before. It was quite satisfying. With ale. And singing.”

No one asks Thor to elaborate, but Maria smirks, “That’s the idea. Nature. Fresh air. Sleeping rough.”

Steve waves his hand around again, caught on an earlier point. “Explain the bears.”

“Also,” Natasha says solemnly, “there are bugs.”

Steve’s expression goes from dubious to no fucking way.

"I like to fish," Bruce says like it’s something that's just occurred to him.

Maria sighs, “We’re going to need reinforcements.”

***

Natasha knocks on Bruce’s door as he finishes packing. He motions her inside, and she sits on his bed. She holds up her offering before he can ask why she’s there. Bruce turns it over, opens it, and laughs. 

It’s a book of poems about fishing, the sublime transcendence of standing in streams. 

She likes it--the openness of his face, the throatiness of his genuine laughter.

“I’ve been reading Norman Maclean,” she says, “to gear up.”

He grins again, eyes crinkling and she likes it so much it's startling.

“Do you think,” he asks, tucking socks into his duffel bag, “that it’s going to be more _Wet Hot American Summer_ , or _Friday the 13th_?”

“Frankly,” she says, “I’m not sure which would horrify me more.”

***

They take Stark’s private jet to an airstrip in the Upper Peninsula. Bruce naps on the plane because Tony can be a certain type of manic on the jet that Bruce finds unpleasant. Plus, the seats are comfortable, and he packed his headphones like they were going on a mission. Airtime and Bruce work better together when he has the option of tuning the experience out.

He even reads some fishing poetry.

The Sprinter vans Maria had rented are waiting for them. Despite some grumbling, the group manages to load up coolers, tents, and paraphernalia into one van, and Avengers plus Sam Wilson and Colonel Rhodes into the other. 

“Auxiliary members,” Hill had said. “I needed some people who are both capable of following orders without arguing, and who have slept outside and are willing to do it again.”

Tony glances between the two men while Bruce carefully stacks his gear and a tent next to the van to take inventory. “Tell me you’re hanging out, hiking the Adirondacks and wearing cargo shorts,” he says to Rhodey. “Please, please tell me.”

He looks over at Sam. “You look healthy. I buy you might sleep outside.”

Sam snorts. “Military,” he says. “You sleep outside, and you learn not to complain.”

Rhodey even brought his own tent. “State of the art,” he said. “You’d make a fortune if you started exploring extreme survival equipment.”

“We’ve got some sort of government contract, “ Stark flapped his hands. “But I don’t sleep outside.”

“You are tonight,” Maria says. “So pick a tent buddy, or I’ll pick for you.”

It breaks out in easy enough lines: Rhodes and Stark, Steve and Sam, Clint and Thor, Natasha and Maria. Bruce gets his own tent. If it comes down to it, he’lln be too big to share.

“Now,” Maria says, unzipping a duffle bag, “Electronics in the bag. Cell phones, headphones, StarkPads, all of it. Weapons too, if you’ve got ‘em in the tac van.”

“You’re kidding,” Stark says, like he thinks she really is.

Maria just shakes the bag. Bruce hands off his headphones reluctantly, catches Natasha’s eye and she turns up her mouth like she’s saying, “Whatcha gonna do.” Steve tosses in his cell phone, looks longingly at the shield. It’s always a little weird to see him in civvies, hauling around the shield like a giant frisbee.

“What if something happens?” he asks, “I want to respect your rules, but things tend to go...pear-shaped when we’re all together.”

“Sat phone in the van, and I’ll keep one in our tent. And nothing’s going to happen that requires your shield. I don’t know why you brought it.”

“Team-building,” Steve says, like he’s gonna argue the point.

Clint claps him on the shoulder. “Bonding, Cap. It’s like team-building without the blood.”

Maria sets her jaw. “I make no promises. But if I find that you’ve been hoarding your screens, I will make you suffer.”

By the time they’ve unpacked, half the beer is gone. Clint and Rhodey pull the first cooking shift, making sandwiches and canned soup for dinner. 

“Hit the hay, people,” Maria says, once the ham and cheese is decimated, and the last vegetable from the industrial sized cans of alphabet soup disposed of. “We’re hiking at dawn.”

Stark and Rhodes give her a round of raspberries, seconded by Clint, Steve and Thor, who are sneaking sips out of a flask like high schoolers on a field trip. Bruce slips away to his tent as Sam and Natasha companionably finish up the dishes.

He hasn’t slept outside in nearly two years, this tent more luxurious than the room he’d been renting when Natasha had ousted him in India. But it’s still different than built walls, beamed or thatched roofs. The vinyl that separates him from the elements is undeniably temporary.

Bruce is glad for the solitude, the chance to hear the voices in the distance, the crickets and the lake lapping nearby. A part of something and yet removed to a safe distance. He sleeps better than he has in months.


	2. Camp Crystal Lake

Maria has little sympathy for Clint’s hangover, or the subsequent bitching. The air is cool this close to dawn, but the sun is rapidly burning the dew off the leaves and grass. 

Rhodes looks grim, but he’s dressed and ready. Thor’s vigorous in hiking shorts and a tank top, big cargo pockets bulging with who knows what. Natasha is effortlessly cool, a gauzy white shirt over a tank top, long legs in hiking boots, hair in a pony tail. 

Bruce can’t fight his smile when she catches his eye, holds up the coffee pot. 

He should. He knows he should. Her own grin is dangerous -- the warmth of it, the all encompassing sincerity. She can put that on as easily as that filmy shirt and it looks natural. Mostly, he thinks it is natural. More so every day. But he’s so afraid to be wrong. 

“You crashed early, doc,” she says, and hands him a cup.

“All this fresh air,” he says. “Makes me sleepy.”

Clint scrubs sleep from his face, and tries to take Natasha’s coffee. She nimbly sidesteps him. “The fucking god of thunder snores like that hammer’s jammed up his nose,” he mumbles. Bruce snorts, but Natasha raises an eyebrow. 

“He’s not the only one,” she says pointedly. “We could hear you both through the tent. I recognize that nose whistle.”

She finally relents, allowing Clint to take her coffee. He grimaces at the lack of sugar, but drinks it anyway.

“I always think drinking with a god will go better for me,” he says, and Natasha’s eyes darken. She doesn’t offer sympathy, just gently takes the cup from him, moves to the coffee station they’ve set up and comes back with a second mug.

It’s a pale mocha color, and Bruce can almost taste the sweetness from here.

“Move ‘em out,” Maria says, as Tony finally ambles out of his tent towards the firepit. She locks up the coffee pot in the bear box.

Sweat runs down Bruce’s spine as they hike uphill, pooling in the small of his back. The heat is less of an issue than the humidity. Even this early, the stickiness has his clothes clinging to his torso, the hair under his shirt itching.

Tony, who’s wearing a glower and $600 lightweight, hi-tech moisture-wicking pants keeps pace with him. He’s got a walking stick straight out of a Swiss chalet, covered in hiking medallions and he stabs the ground with it as they go.

Despite his pissy mood, Tony’s pacing Bruce and they’re at the head of the pack behind Hill, with Clint bringing up the rear, Natasha keeping him company.

Hill marches them through the woods, across a small river, and up to a waterfall that crashes with eloquent intensity into the pool below. It’s kind of breathtaking -- the blue of the sky, the lush greenery surrounding them, and the thunder of water, sparking up bright rainbows. 

“It’s damned pretty,” says Sam, “but god I’m hungry.”

Rhodes nods, and takes a power bar when Thor produces a handful from his pockets.

The hike had been several miles longer than advertised. Bruce suspects a wrong turn, but no one is going to call Hill out on her geotracking the first day.

Steve slaps his neck so loud it cracks like a shot. There are marks fading from red to white along his arms. 

“The mosquitoes,” he says at Sam’s open mouthed guffaw. “Won’t leave me alone. I’m getting eaten alive.”

“Vinegar,” Stark says. “You’ve gotta drink vinegar. Right now, you’re like a big old hunk of patriotic candy to them.”

“That’s bullshit, Tony,” Steve says, but when they get back to camp, Bruce notices him pouring half of the apple cider vinegar into an enameled tin mug and slugging it back like a shot while he’s prepping bacon in a pan.

Punked or not, Steve stops complaining about the bugs.

Mosquitoes don’t bother Bruce anymore, but he’s learned to swat at his arms when everyone else does.

He slaps his bicep, turns his hand like he’s removing sticky guts and sees Natasha eyeing him speculatively. He wipes his hands on his pants, and her mouth twitches.

***

“You’ve gotta guide your partner through the woods, making sure they don’t get hurt,” Maria instructs. “At the same time, you’re all a bunch of cheaters, so I want those blindfolds tight.”

Sam is Natasha’s partner for the game. She’s blindfolded first. Sam’s so much taller it’s hard to hold onto his shoulder and follow his lead, but she shrugs it off. 

“Just give me good directions, Wilson.”

“Four steps in front of you there’s a tree branch. Don’t step on it.” She navigates the forest floor with ease, stepping over things before he mentions them.

Stark and Rhodes are bickering not that far away. It’s kind of hilarious, this whole thing is kind of hilarious.

“Can you see?” Sam asks when she nimbly steps around a rock covered in lichen.

“Nope,” she says, “I’m just good at this.”

“Not really sure it’s a trust exercise if you’re gaming the system.”

“The point, Wilson, is gaming the system. But I promise, when it’s your turn, I’ll be nice.”

***

Maria calls for football in the afternoon. On one side of the camp is a stretch of field grass, marked by trees and brush. They create a set of rough goal posts.

It’s nearly a relief, after the hike and the trust exercise. There’s been enough forced camaraderie even for people who like each other. They’ve certainly never let that camaraderie stand in the way of believing each and every one of their teammates is full of shit.

Rhodes looks at Maria and Natasha, going back and forth like he wants to say something, but knows it’s going to end badly. “Are we playing touch or tackle?”

“Touch,” she says. 

“Not on my account,” Natasha gives Rhodey a toothy smile that’s full of sweet malice.

“I don’t doubt your tackling ability,” he says. “It’s more the...disparity in size and strength we’ve got going.” His eyes slide to Bruce, to Thor, and Steve. Even though he agrees with Colonel Rhodes, he still flushes.

Maria dismisses the question. “No one wants Banner getting tackled, and I don’t need concussed superheroes.”

She assigns Thor to referee.

Bruce protests. “It should be me,” he says.

Hill shakes her head. “The rest of you lie and cheat too much, including you Banner. Plus, you need to get out there, get your hands on your teammates.” 

Even touch football feels so risky. He holds up his hands, and Hill gives him a shrewd look then glances around at the others. “Anyone afraid Banner’s gonna lose it during the game?”

He’d like to be reassured by the guffaws and headshakes, but Clint’s flat expression seems so much more realistic and Sam is rubbing his chin like he’s just not sure enough to offer an opinion.

“You’ll be fine,” Natasha says, fingers light on his elbow as Hill moves on to pick captains. She assigns Tony and Steve to lead the teams. 

It’s such a blatant callout that Natasha actually barks out a laugh when Maria asks who’s going to be shirts and who’s going to be skins. “Can I choose?” she asks.

“That’s clearly sexual harassment,” Tony says. 

Steve just looks pained, and starts taking off his shirt. 

“Assuming a lot aren’t you, Cap,” Stark says, and Steve hesitates for a moment. Maria reassures him. “No, really, she meant you.”

Natasha throws Tony a pointed look.

“Banner,” Steve says, “You’re used to being half naked in public. Wanna be on my team?”

“Jesus, Steve,” Bruce mutters, “You used to be the last one picked for dodgeball too, weren’t you.”

Steve shrugs, and Bruce moves over to Steve’s side of the invisible line.

They end up with Sam and Maria Hill rounding out their team. Sam shucks his tank top, and Hill pulls off her technical shirt to reveal smooth tan skin, strong shoulders, and a Captain America sports bra, the shield prominently displayed over one breast. She’s unembarrassed even as Tony hoots. 

Hill stares Bruce down. He sighs, unbuttons the linen camp shirt, and hangs it on a tree branch.

He bounces a little on his toes, feeling deeply self-conscious and glares at Hill when she looks him up and down. “I usually just see footage, when you’re filthy or wearing a rescue blanket,” she says. “So, and I mean this sincerely, not bad.”

“That’s definitely sexual harassment,” Sam says. His grin is wide and he high-fives Maria. 

“Remember people, touch football,” Hill emphasizes.

Steve gathers their team. “Try to distract them. Clint and Nat are sneaky, and I think Rhodes actually knows what he’s doing. If you can get the ball to Sam, he’ll take care of the rest.” 

It’s not much of a strategy, but Bruce thinks it’s as good a plan as any.

Stark’s team huddles quickly, then breaks. Clint and Natasha jostle each other before silently falling into positions as Rhodes mans the quarterback role. Bruce isn’t sure they even had a conversation that didn’t involve elbows, but he’s seen that communication from them before. 

Then Thor blows the whistle.

Steve and Rhodes show their competitive streaks early. There’s a lot of missed passes, shoulders in guts. Clint’s a goddamned bruiser. He barrels into Steve before he can snap the ball, knocking him backwards and earning him a flag and a sharp word from Hill. 

“Grass is slippery,” Clint says, like it’s an excuse.

Bruce wipes sweat off his forehead, He’s sticky from the humidity and they’re kicking up a fair amount of debris. Tickles of grass stick to his skin and chest hair. Wilson is quick, agile, able to appear in the air or on the ground a half-second before he needs to be. Hill’s tough, aggressive approach has her powering between Rhodes and Stark with a hand-off play, long powerful legs moving her down the makeshift field to score the first goal. Plus, she plays dirty. At one point, Clint hits the ground, and Bruce would swear that Hill tripped him. 

Natasha is faster than the rest of them, more nimble and able to duck and flit. She’s a joy to watch as she jumps up, intercepting one of Steve’s passes and taking off down the field, avoiding Sam’s lunge, and tying the game.

They’re definitely putting the touch in touch football. Bruce is trying to stay out of arm’s reach, but he can’t lie, the game is getting to him. He can keep it together; play in the spirit of team building. There’s no threat yet, still just one upmanship. The problem is Steve.

Cap keeps Bruce guarding Tony like it will be an even match. And while Tony’s a good strategist, and more athletic than Bruce would expect, he’s still on the short side for this crowd, he’s in his 40s, and it’s clear that football was never his game. For all of Stark’s strategy and cunning, Bruce understands unchecked aggression on a cellular level. He also spent years running from people who wanted to do him harm. Tony’s never run from anything.

He takes Tony down in a running play, gets too close and barrels into him before he can check his momentum. Stark goes down with an _oof_. For all that it’s accidental, the slam of bodies is satisfying, too much so. Bruce tastes blood as Tony shoves him away. Bruce rolls to his feet, offers a hand, and when they’re both standing Stark grabs Bruce’s jaw and looks in his eyes like he’s checking for concussion. He gives a sharp nod.

“Sorry,” Bruce says. It doesn’t sound like he means it, but he does. They’re both covered in grass now. Bruce makes a half-hearted effort to brush it off but doesn’t get far.

“We’re cool, jelly bean,” Tony says and moves back into position with a hitch in his gait like he wants to limp but has too much pride.

Bruce stays on him through the next play, moving when Tony moves, ignoring the ball, just watching Stark, watching the tics and quirks and eye movements that telegraph his plays and those he’s suggesting to his team.

Tony feints, Bruce lunges, and it’s more aggressive than he means it to be. There’s actual fear in Tony’s eyes, but before he can really lean into the tackle, something knocks him on his side, rolls him to his back.

Natasha presses her knees into his ribs, palm hard against his clavicle. Bruce is breathing hard, less from the exertion than from the rise of his blood. Nat’s expression is calm, features relaxed, breathing deceptively steady, but there’s real tension in her arm. 

“We good?” she asks.

Bruce closes his eyes, tries to concentrate on the weight of her body, the pressure and tension. How hard she’s working not to send any kind of subconscious signal to the Other Guy that it’s play time. He wants to touch her, feel her skin, ground himself that way. He won’t. Can’t. He holds her gaze, and when he feels her grip relax, trusting that she’s reading him correctly, he lets his body sag into the ground.

The shift in her body is subtle, from protector to friend as her knees ease up their press against his ribs, her pelvis rolling slightly so she’s less holding him down then straddling him. Her hand opens on his chest and she slides it down to his heart, then across to his sternum, fingers curling delicately in his chest hair.

It’s whiplash from shame to lust. He opens his eyes, feeling helpless and she sees it, cat in the cream expression on her face.

“Good,” he says, and she rubs a circle over the notch in his sternum and then rises smoothly.

“Doc’s out,” Natasha says to Hill, who takes her word for it like she would in the field. Bruce is absurdly grateful.

“I’ll referee,” he says. “I think that the spirit of competition is proving a little too much for me. I really don’t want to see what The Other Guy does to a football.” 

“You’re fine.” Tony’s bouncing on his heels like he wants another go at the situation. “Stay in the game.” 

“Maybe later,” Bruce says, “And by later I mean a couple of decades from never. It was a bad idea.”

In the second half, they give up on the rules. Steve gets booted for body slamming Clint in retaliation for the earlier play. Thor, delighted to be in the game but unclear on the rules, decides that it’s easier to pick up Natasha when she has the football already than to catch it himself. He runs down the field with her tucked under his arm. Maria calls foul as Bruce and Steve laugh so hard they knock into each other. 

Tony howls in outrage, and the game is forfeit.

“We need beer,” Sam says, “and lots of it.”


	3. Camp North Star

Natasha mans the grill for dinner, making burgers and hot dogs and vegetable skewers. Maria and Sam play sous chef, cleaning as they go in case of bears, feeding people in stages as burgers come off the grill.

She hands Bruce a second beer and the platter of skewers, then sits down at the picnic table across from him. Rhodey stokes up the fire then joins them, sitting close to Maria. Bruce pulls tomatoes, mushrooms and zucchini off the skewers with his fingers, putting them on a plate in the middle of the table.

“You’re damned good,” Rhodes says to Maria, “with that ball.”

“All sorts of balls,” Maria says, with an evil grin and Bruce snorts beer through his nose at Rhodes expression. Rhodes knows her more casually, still treats her like she’s part of the military hierarchy. A peer, or close enough in rank to deserve admiration and respect.

Natasha certainly respects Maria. In part because of her no fucks given attitude, both personally and professionally, along with a wicked, bawdy wit.

Clint is clearly antsy, he reaches over Natasha, snatching up mushrooms and then dropping them when they prove too hot. Natasha slaps his wrist. “Wait,” she says, but knows he won’t.

Instead, he heads over to the sprinter van. Bruce follows him, glancing over Hill’s bent head as she finishes the tiny tomatoes. “Aha,” Clint shouts, and Natasha rolls her eyes but looks over her shoulder. He holds up a guitar.

“There’s another one in there somewhere,” Maria says. “Probably a banjo and some harmonicas.”

“We’re the fucking Partridge family now?” Tony is taking the football loss hard, sleeping on the ground even harder.

Rhodes joins Clint, climbing into the van and emerging with a second acoustic guitar. He tosses out a harmonica which Steve snags, blowing a little dust out of it.

“This is ridiculous,” Tony says, taking the tambourine. 

“I’ll take that uke,” Sam gestures with a gimme motion, and at Clint’s snort says, “Ladies like the tiny guitars, dude.”

The drift towards the fire is collective and unspoken.

***

Natasha sits in one of the low chairs in front of the fire, leaning a little towards Clint, close enough to hassle him but not so close that she has to hear him sing. Bruce sits across from her, and the firelight flickers on his face, making him look tired and kind of removed; but he’s there. She’d been sorry to see him withdraw from them the night before, instead of taking advantage of this forced camaraderie, giving it a chance to become something real. But she had no right to ask him to stay. He has to come to that conclusion on his own.

Clint’s voice sounds like a rusty saw, but he can play enough guitar for a sing-a-long. Rhodes, it turns out, can both carry a tune and keep time. Natasha takes the tambourine away from Stark, and eventually Maria and Rhodes swap because he's got a wider repertoire than Maria’s _Stairway to Heaven_.

“I learned the guitar to up my game in college,” Rhodey says. “You go to school with a bunch of smelly computer obsessive engineers, knowing a basic scale makes you a rock god.”

Stark barks out a laugh. “Rock god? Hilarious. More like smooth jazz loa.” He flicks his thumb at Rhodey, winks. “Luther Vandross and Pavarotti, I get. Even Freddy Mercury. But Steve Perry? Dio?”

Rhodes flicks up a perfect eyebrow. “I can throwdown on _Faithfully_ ,” he says. “Why should I be ashamed of that?”

“He’d go through the catalogue after a big exam. A twelve pack and power ballads, belted out in the common room by a skinny black man with terrible taste.”

 

“I like Journey,” Hill says, and Rhodes turns his charm and dimples on her in thanks.

“Kids these days,” he says. “Too bad they don’t know any De La Soul. Journey’s kind of been ruined for me by bad karaoke. Now, Marvin Gaye and Sam Cooke…”

Sam nods like he approves, and Steve snorts but Maria tips up her beer. “I also like Bon Jovi,” she says. “Van Morrison, Springsteen...I like bar bands. There’s something about a band that’s just having a really good time up there that makes you feel like they’ll go all night fueled on cheap booze and peanuts.”

Clint strums a few chords and hums, “Just a small town girl…”

Maria joins in, “Living in a lonely world.”

Sam shakes his head but he’s grinning and Stark tips all the way back in his seat, wrapping a pretend rope around his neck and pulling tight when Rhodes adds his own voice.

He does have a nice tenor, Natasha thinks, and she can’t fight off her own grin as Bruce and Sam join in.

They wander in and out of songs, sticking with them just as long as someone remembers enough lyrics. Bruce, Tony and Rhodes hit pretty hard on the ‘70s rock ballads and Detroit soul, Sam tries to guide them through songs written in the 21st century, but calls uncle when Clint tries to help, largely because Clint seems to know a disproportionate amount of tween girl pop. 

Natasha and Steve do more listening than singing, glancing at each other when a song one of them knows comes up. Steve’s been working hard to catch up on the modern era, and Natasha has studied American pop culture vigorously enough that she can fake an informed interest. But American and British pop and rock mostly just stir up hazy half-memories, moments of not knowing who or where she was, bootleg notes and voices pouring out through communist speakers in smoky clubs. She’s not even sure if they’re real or something she saw in a movie.

She likes music, or rather, she likes this. The sense of community, of voices blending together. Thor doesn’t seem to recognize anything but hums happily to it all.

In a lull, Clint makes a kazoo sound with his mouth, and sings, “Do your ears hang low, do they wobble to and fro…”

Tony hurls a marshmallow at him. Clint lobs back a graham cracker which bounces off Tony’s forehead.

“Don't be a dick, Stark.”

“You’re a fruit loop,” Stark says. “Marshmallow fluff.”

“Hey hey now,” Sam says, “Let’s get some Kum-Ba-Ya up in here.”

Tony starts to sing it, and no one joins. His voice is rich and warm, and he knows all the words.

Sam whistles in appreciation.

“Rich kid with workaholic parents,” Stark says, “Keep up people. Summer camp and boarding school isn’t all heroin overdosing and fucking in bathrooms. There’s a surprising number of sing-a-longs in between.”

Hill’s gaping at him with an expression that says she should have known better. “Just because I didn’t want to camp doesn’t mean I haven’t,” he huffs.

Rhodes strums absently, noodling around and then starts to play a more deliberate tune. Natasha is surprised she knows this song, and she likes it enough to know the words, even if the sentiments are distinctly American. Steve’s been working on East Coast balladeers and Tony had taken him and Natasha to see Springsteen a few weeks ago. She enjoyed it enough to seek out the song, to put it to memory.

“I come from down in the valley…” she sings, mostly to herself, but Clint nudges her and she catches Stark’s eye. He tilts his head, closes his eyes for a moment, but he sings, harmonizing with Rhodes. It’s loud enough to give her some room to hide if she wants, to meet them if she’s brave enough.

Her heart lurches a little, warmth in her throat for the billionaire seeing something for himself in a working class story about failed dreams. So she pushes aside her embarrassment at singing aloud, twines her voice with Tony’s and then Clint and Maria start to sing, too.

She sees Bruce looking at her, dark eyes focused and intent. Her cheeks heat under his gaze, the way his mouth turns up a little, thumb on his chin. The way he takes everything in like he’s committing it to memory.

Then somehow, the other voices drop out until it’s just her and Tony, the single guitar, Steve’s harmonica, the crackle of fire, and the hum of water and bugs.

The song finishes to spontaneous applause, and Thor bangs down his beer bottle. “It is my turn,” he says. “To teach you drinking songs.”

The drinking parts of Asgardian drinking songs are no joke, and even Clint is wary. After a dozen or so rounds of songs, one by one, they turn in. Bruce says he wants to fish in the morning, and Stark rubs at his shoulder like that tackle had maybe done some damage after all. 

When Bruce says goodnight, it feels like he’s talking directly to her. Natasha doesn’t look away. She watches him head to his tent on the edge of the camp, thinks about his ribs expanding and contracting against her thighs, the soft skin of his sides and the texture of his chest hair. How the thought of leaning down and licking the hollow of his throat had been all consuming for a moment, driven in part by the fear-based adrenaline and in part by his blown out pupils, the slackening of his mouth.

Clint nudges her and she shakes away the thoughts, leans into him, the solid feel of his arm against hers. When she goes to bed, she can smell the smoke in her hair, the earth on her hands, her own clean sweat. She sleeps well, despite Maria’s light snore.

***

Bruce emerges from his tent, fishing pole in hand, shortly after Natasha has settled into a chair with her book, and while he raises an eyebrow when he sees her, he doesn’t seem overly surprised. 

He leans the pole against the picnic table, checks the coffee she’d started and pours some into a tin cup. He holds it out to her, but she waves him off, reaches beside her and shows him her own mug.

They drink in silence for a few minutes, enjoying the cool of the morning, the quiet of open air.

Bruce fiddles with the tip of the fishing pole, the handle to the tackle box, working his jaw like he’s working out a problem.

She puts her finger in her book, cocking her head. Finally, he squints, rubs his thumb over the hinges on the box.

“You, uh, you didn’t seem much interested in fishing back at the tower,” he says, hesitant, “but do you want to come with me? It’s a nice morning--might be even nicer by the water.”

On the one hand, she isn’t particularly interested in fishing. On the other, she’s a little intrigued. Bruce’s reserve isn’t always intentional. He just doesn’t always remember that he can share things with people, that they might want to share things with him. As someone who doesn’t do much sharing herself, she appreciates that. 

And, if she’s honest, she likes the idea of rewarding him for asking and herself for answering.

“Sure,” she says, “Okay.” 

He gives her half a smile and she picks up her book, leaving the blanket that she’d had over her lap.

“Won’t you be cold?” he asks, eyes flicking to her cut-offs and bare legs.

“I’ll be fine. Sun’s out. But let me get my hat.”

Stark has stumbled out of his tent to piss when she returns. She’s sporting a sun hat the size of a soccer field, a plaid shirt knotted at the waist over her tank top, and battered Chuck Taylors so worn that the soles have cracked on the side. They’d been a gift from Clint when SHIELD had finally handed over her naturalization papers. She doesn’t wear them often these days, but the camping excursion had seemed earnest enough to deserve her effort.

“So not Friday the 13th,” Bruce says, finishing his coffee.

Stark gives Natasha a long look, cheeks growing a little pink and says, “Christ, Romanoff, don’t wander off. You look like the Queen of the Strawberry Festival. They’ll hold you hostage to ride on their float.”

“You’re welcome to come too, Tony,” Bruce says, amused, “but you either have to fish or sit there quietly and not scare them.”

He’s still staring, eyes flicking to Bruce. Natasha raises an eyebrow, and Stark caves, dropping his gaze and shooing them off. Unsettling Stark, in whatever way she had, was unintentional. She’s not above using that to get what she wants, though. 

A hint of sly warmth pulls at Bruce’s mouth, and he catches her eye. He flicks his gaze up to her hat and back, like they’re sharing a private joke and she’s glad for the shade of the hat. She’s not much given to blushing. It’s so rare for anyone besides Clint to see beyond a costume.

“Let’s go,” she says to Bruce and takes the tackle box out of his hand.

*** 

Natasha sits on a rock, watching Bruce untangle a fishing hook from his reel, idly going through his box of lures. He frees the hook and casts out the line with a quick practiced snap followed by the hum of the wire then a tiny plink as the hook hits water and sinks. A series of careful clicks signal the reel turning.

“Did you even bother to put on sunscreen?” she asks.

There are brightly colored lures in the box, spinners and feathers, hot pink putty and orange caviar. A silver brick of Velveeta is tucked into the side. She picks up a glittering metal guppy, holds it up and watches it twirl.

“It’s 8 a.m. I don’t need sunscreen, the sun isn’t high enough. Besides, I don’t burn.”

She gives an outraged snort, but it doesn’t surprise her. The bigger surprise is him admitting it. She wonders if it’s like the bugs, or just a thing. Between yesterday’s hike and the football game, his skin is darkening to a warm tan.

Bruce flaps his hand at her, then pats at one of the pockets on his pants. There are a lot of pockets. The pants are ridiculous--his bribe from Maria. He hadn’t objected to the camping plan, but knew how much she needed someone firmly on her side who wasn’t a former SHIELD agent. The fishing gear is a hodge podge from Maria’s personal camping equipment and from Clint’s room in the Tower, although he won’t explain why he has half of it. 

Nat knows it’s because his kids like to fish. They also like to camp. Clint doesn’t enjoy either, but he loves his kids, and picks them up things whenever they go to places like Scotland and Shanghai and Wyoming--places where people fish.

“There’s bug spray in there with an SPF of something,” Bruce says. “If you want it.”

She digs around in the tackle box, but can’t find it, so he pats around his pockets again until he discovers it on the other leg. He tosses the bottle to her. 

She examines it. “Is this even from this century?”

He shrugs.

Natasha spritzes some on her arms and legs anyway, doubting its effectiveness. She’s not sure what she’s doing here, but it’s early and it’s quiet and she enjoys both of those things, even more so lately in his company, uncovering these small, intimate parts of him, the unadvertised aspects of his past and personality. Things that normal people might unearth together over pizza and mini-golf, and the two of them exchange like an ante across gunfire and near death, over bandages and books and coffee with whipped cream and Tony Stark’s bad ideas. 

She likes the focus he turns to fishing, as much as she likes the curve of his skull and the shape of his forearms, exposed from his rolled up sleeves, the set of his jaw, the way he folds his glasses so deliberately when he’s working hard to contain himself. She likes the way he looks at things, the way he looks at her.

Bruce is rage and terror. She knows this, lives with both the concept and the reality. But he’s also smart, sardonic self-interest and wry humor, smothering guilt and deep kindness. Like her, he’s testing options for redemption. He is a man looking for answers, and for control, and she can feel the depth of his commitment to all of those things with the stroke of his fingers along her palm, with the look in his eyes as he moves from monster to man, as those lines blur for them both.

There’d been a kind of brutal honesty between them from the start. The lies she’s told him have been of necessity, and she’s worked very hard after that first set to give him truth.

Retreating to the tower after the Senate hearings, she’d found a lot of quiet. Stark had opened the space to her, but Bruce was the one who’d sat across from her on the couch, passed the crossword puzzle back and forth, kept her company without pushing, not asked anything of her. 

It had been the kindest thing anyone had done for her in so long, and she’d felt unworthy of it, mourning her life of lies, of manipulation and assassination that now had to be called into question.

No one knew better than he did what it was like to be used, to not know if you were a force for good or evil, to re-build over and over again as a new lens slots into place behind old eyes. 

Helping him develop a failsafe, a way to come back to himself, had been the very least she could do. Those moments together--two people in the midst of transition, one physical, one internal--leave her breathless every time, initially with fear and now with awe. They humble her, run through her like electricity, like longing when he puts his hand in hers. 

She and Clint have a partnership built on sacrifice, on history, on necessity and reliance, a bond built from having had no choice but to be part of each other’s very selves to survive. Steve had been there when she turned her life upside down, a pissy moral compass, a beacon and a friend. Stark was Stark, and that relationship would always be complicated, but he has given her a place to regroup, to rebuild.

And Bruce? He’s giving her something else. An odd friendship, trust, an indefinable ...something that stretches between them, charged with possibility.

Bruce casts and reels, casts and reels. The plink of the lure, the whir of the line, both offer up a steady sonic rhythm that’s lulling her into dreamy affection as she idly flicks one of the lures -- a bright spinner.

Natasha puts down the spinner and picks out the hooks, turns them over in her hand, sorting through them like gems. There’s something wrong with them.

“Where are the barbs?”

“Took ‘em off.” 

He’d been fussing with something on the ride into camp. The pliers and the file make sense now. “I like the act of fishing. I don’t so much like catching the fish.”

Of course, she thinks.

“So this is fair play,” she asks "and a pointless exercise?"

“More or less.” He’s quiet for a few minutes, and then says, “When I was kid, we didn’t really do vacations. But once in awhile we’d camp with my aunt and cousin, fish, eat the trout we caught for breakfast. I always liked the idea of it more than the reality. But…” he shrugs. “It’s a good memory. One I like to keep intact.”

She looks out at the water. He casts his line again. Reels it in.

“I don’t like to watch them die, or to clean them.”

“Squeamish,” she teases, and he shrugs. 

“All of this,” she says, finally, “it’s all play.”

He nods. “Yeah.”

“We’ve both done these things to survive.”

He nods again, resetting and adjusting the reel and line. There’s still Velveeta on the hook. He carefully flicks it back into the water.

“I haven’t always had the luxury of filing off the barbs,” he says. “Or using processed cheese as bait.”

She watches him for a minute, looks back out at the water. She remembers fishing in a frigid stream, shivering, wire and lures and makeshift bait because she wouldn’t be fed that night if she didn’t feed herself. It’s not a distressing memory, she doesn’t let those things distress her. She tries to match it with his--a child standing in a river, water rushing past, holding onto his line and fighting against current and catch, happy. There’s a surprising tenderness to the image, and she feels it for both children.

 

She pulls up the thermos she’d brought, and pours out coffee into the lid. He secures the reel, and puts the pole in the ground, comes over and sits on the rock next to her. He takes the coffee she offers, sips from the cup, hands it back to her. He’s sun-warmed and smells like the outdoors, kind of piney and earthy, and the press of his side against hers as they angle together to fit on the rock is satisfying in a way she can’t really specify.

He reaches back for the cup as she pours another round, and meets her eyes. She runs her teeth over her bottom lip. “I like your hat,” he says, and she quirks up her mouth, and reaches to pick a leaf out of his hair.

“Nature,” she says, and his laugh is warm and throaty and she thinks, idly, of stripping off her shorts, unbuttoning his ridiculous multi-pocketed pants, sinking down onto him, the heat of the rock under his ass, the heat of him searing into her, the way the tiny ridges of stone would press into her knees and shins, the way his fingers would dig into her hips, how beautiful he’d look when he came inside her.

She shakes her head, and brushes her fingers along his cheek. The sound of his stubble rasping against her fingertips is headier than she expected and they both stutter a little with it.

He tilts into her touch, and says, low, like he’s anticipating the answer, “What are you thinking about?”

She doesn’t demur, just tells him. “Sex.”

He swallows, “Abstractly, or in general.”

“Specifically,” she says, amused, and he angles into her, shifting his weight.

“Specifically?” he counters, and he brushes the back of his fingers along her knee, the touch so glancing she could have imagined it if his pupils weren’t darkening. One of the pockets high on his thigh has a zipper, and she undoes it, wiggling her fingers into it, curious.

“It’s a beautiful morning,” she says, “and it’s warm. It’s the middle of nowhere, and you smell really good.”

“Therefore, sex?” He sounds more amused than horny, but he licks his lower lip, and she watches his mouth, and just says, “Yes.”

He slides his fingers under the edge of her cutoffs, rubbing the loose strings with his thumb, and she thinks about how good it would feel for him to wrap those clever fingers around her thigh, solid palm holding her, holding her down, holding her up.

“I thought you might be a lot more anxious about this idea,” she says.

“So did I,” he says, and tugs a little at her hem. “But I think curiosity, and let’s face it, lust, has gotten the better of me.”

“Interesting.” It’s an honesty she didn’t expect and it both floors and delights her. She’s sensed that he has that playfulness in him, hidden so deeply under his wall of kind reserve. And frankly, the way he’s looking at her, has been looking at her, suggests that not only is there a well of lust, but possibly a slew of ideas on how to answer that lust that he’s been keeping to himself but could be persuaded to share. She’s aces at persuasion.

She leans closer, shading them both with the sun hat, and he blinks slowly, and slides his hand up under the cuff of her shorts, and her breath hitches. 

Then the sound of twigs and grass snapping and sifting registers, and she quirks her mouth in apology, moving away as Thor bellows, “Breakfast, Doctor. I understand that this is a time to catch fish and celebrate the glory of the morning, but there is fried pork, and some very complicated breakfast burritos that I do not believe are actually thawed yet--but it is the spirit of the endeavor!”

She’s actually laughing a little by the time Thor appears in front of them, partly at how quickly Bruce’s cheeks had flushed in embarrassment and in part at the sight of the God of Thunder tromping through the brush in Tevas. Maria had been given carte blanche to outfit him appropriately, so the cargo shorts and t-shirt are very well fitting, and he looks like they should detour to drop him off in Key West on their way home.

He gets closer, standing within a few feet of them and insists, “Breakfast. Hill says we cannot eat until everyone is present. Did you catch anything?”

“No,” says Bruce, and she can hear a trace of laughter running under his words. “We’re empty handed.”

He gathers up the tackle box, and the fishing pole, and nudges her to stand up and follow Thor back to the campsite. She’s putting the thermos to rights when he leans over, mouth grazing her ear and says, “We’re revisiting this topic later.” 

She runs her teeth over her bottom lip again, flirtatious, and he frowns playfully before gesturing her to trail along in Thor’s wake.

Clint greets them with a wave back at camp, shoving a stick into the fire-pit filled with silver oblongs. “There’s an assload of bacon and pancakes because apparently Hill’s camping involves a lot more edible food than my experiences, but Stark’s magical dry ice has frozen these burritos into weapons.”

“Seriously, Stark, dry ice?” Maria is saying, “Who brings dry ice camping?”

Tony is drinking coffee out of a decidedly high-tech mug, bug-eyed sunglasses shielding his eyes. His head to toe camo gear is glaringly obnoxious. “People who don’t understand why the fuck sleeping in a tent and cooking over a fire is anything less than a primitive exercise in torture. Also, people who don’t want food poisoning.”

He raises the mug towards Natasha and Bruce. “Also, why do Strawberry Shortcake and the Zen fishing master get to beg off breakfast detail?”

Hill ignores him.

Natasha takes a piece of bacon from Clint. “Bruce is in charge of lunch,” she says, “so I’d be nicer if you don’t want to still be gnawing on that frozen burrito.”

“Nah,” Tony says, “Green bean and I are sympatico. He’ll feed me regardless.”


	4. Camp Walden

This morning, Hill’s summer camp for superheroes team building exercise is tailored to the former agents’ skillset. The game is part escape room, part Capture the Flag. “You want to secure the prize, but you’re going to need to figure out where it’s being kept and stop the other team from finding it.”

“Normally, this is a night game, but that seems a little unfair. Romanoff and Barton are trained in retrieval, so I’m splitting them up. There are caches of tools and intel hidden in the woods…”

Stark breaks in, both awed and irked, “When the hell did you set all of this up?”

Hill ignores him and continues. “You can use what you find, but no weapons and no injuries. You can take prisoners. And you’ve got a time limit.” 

It’s Natasha, Tony, Sam and Thor versus Clint, Rhodes, Steve and Bruce, an even match of brains, brawn, tactics, tinker, tailor, soldier, spy, but the nuances make all the difference. 

Natasha and Tony prove remarkably compatible in an endeavor that requires both stealth and misdirection. Rhodes and Steve treat it like a training run. The others are wild cards. Clint is sneaky and prone to sabotage. Bruce is smart, used to subterfuge but lacking an interest in tactics. Sam is still figuring out how he fits into the whole group dynamic, sussing out strengths and motivations, and no one can really second guess Thor, who enjoys the exercise for the game that it is. 

Team Clint lets Team Nat do the work of determining the location of the flag, then Steve makes a run for it once Bruce passes on the intel. Steve’s efforts are thwarted by the bomb Natasha makes from dirt and random detritus Stark has in his pockets. It knocks Steve on his ass, an effective distraction, but it also knocks half of Nat’s team into the brush. 

Tony gets up high enough to grab the flag out of a pine hollow before Clint drops a rope from high above him, snagging the flag with a grappling hook, then bouncing between branches like a lemur.

Clint turns back to taunt them, and Thor calls down a crack of lightning that splits open the tree he’s heading for. He loses his balance, tumbling to the ground. The ricochet spills Tony out of his own tree, but Natasha ignores him, grabs the flag, and sprints towards camp. 

Steve, who has recovered his footing, heads towards her. 

“Here!” Sam is suddenly next to her, and she tosses him the flag, then turns back and runs straight at Steve, hoo a ks around his shoulder and climbs him until her thighs are around his chest, twisting and using her weight. Her momentum brings him down while Sam sprints back to the base. 

Maria declares Team Nat the winner, despite Thor’s weather manipulation. “I said you could use your skills, not weapons,” she says. “But he didn’t use Mjolnir, and he didn’t technically hit Barton with anything.”

Bruce retrieves the first aid kit.

Tony waves off the medical care, dabbing antibiotic cream on his elbow and cheek. He holds up the busted polarized sunglasses mournfully.

“They were hideous,” Rhodey says. “You looked like an asshole.”

“You’re just jealous of my effortless cool,” Stark says.

“Always.”

Bruce bandages up Barton as Sam shakes his head. “Honest to god deus ex machina,” he says. 

“It doesn’t pay to be good,” Rhodes says, shaking his head at Steve. “Someday we’ll learn.”

”It’s not the dumbest thing I’ve ever done at a mandatory retreat,” Clint says, laying on his back in a patch of leaves and grass, panting. 

Natasha shrugs off her overshirt, hums her agreement at Clint, and lets Bruce swab cream over the gash along the back of her neck. She hisses, not expecting the sting. She’s mostly letting him fuss because he likes it.

“You’re supposed to blow on it,” Clint mutters at the noise she makes, and she shivers at the thought, holding her hair to the side. Bruce rubs a gentle circle at the base of her skull as the sting ebbs.

“Can’t hurt,” he murmurs into her ear, and gently blows cool air over the scratch. Her skin prickles, body running hot and cold. She’s unravelling with these delicate touches.

“Stop consorting with the enemy,” Stark hollers, “Bruce is on lunch duty and I’m starving.”

“We are definitely doing this later,” she mutters over her shoulder. He doesn’t say anything, just balls up the cotton as she waves off a bandage.

When Bruce heads off to fix lunch, dragging Stark with him, Clint snags her ankle and opens one eye. 

“Whatcha doin’ there?” he asks, with a flat placidity that she knows is a front.

She shrugs, but it pulls at the cut. “Nothing,” she says. Pauses. “Probably nothing.”

He opens his other eye. “Doesn’t look like nothing.”

She concedes. “Right now it’s nothing.”

Clint rolls his eyes. “I don’t want to know. Just be nice.”

“I’m always nice,” she says.

***

Bruce adjusts his beach chair watching his teammates horse around. He’s stolen a pair of Stark’s ridiculous sunglasses, but the black and white checkered board shorts and rumpled linen button down are his own.

“This is a bad idea,” Steve stands on the dock, looking out at the lake. 

Maria is clearly tired of arguing. “Just get in or stop bitching.”

“It looks cold.”

Sam hops back and forth from one foot to another at the edge of the shore. “It is cold.”

Natasha walks up behind Steve and shoves him in. “Now you don’t have to decide.”

Steve sputters in the water.

“Jesus Rogers, move around a little,” Maria tells him. “You’re going to put an eye out with those nipples.”

“In for a penny,” Sam says, and runs up on the dock and then out, cannonballing into the water.

“Where’s Barton?” Maria looks around, not seeing him. Stark and Rhodes haven’t made it to the lake yet.

Bruce gestures out to the middle of the lake. Maria squints, spots a raft and a cooler in the middle of the lake.

“He took the beer. If I were running this mission,” he pushes his glasses up his nose, “ I’d direct someone to retrieve it.”

“Gonna swim, doc?”

Natasha’s still wearing the cutoffs, but has swapped the tank top for a black bikini, all straps and lines bisecting the smooth, pale planes of her skin. The sun reflects off her bright hair and he’s dazzled by her, the morning’s flirtation still running hot along his nerves.

“Kind of enjoying the sunshine, and if that water’s cold enough to freeze Steve into a pornographic display, I’m thinking I’ll stay out of it.”

“Hmmm,” she says. “Sounds like someone needs a challenge.”

Bruce grins up at her. “Nope. I’m good.”

“That means I’m gonna have to rely on the military minded to retrieve the beer.”

“Your mission, agent, should you choose to accept it…”

She laughs, winks at him. “If I do retrieve it, what do I get?”

His mouth twitches. “My eternal devotion.”

She snorts.

“A promise to help you cheat when we inevitably build a tower of office furniture?”

“You’re on.”

She slips the shorts off, leaving them next to his chair, saunters to the end of the dock, whistles for the swimmers, and calls them to the edge, squatting down, and gesturing out at Clint, clearly hatching a plan. 

Soon after, Sam takes off towards the canoe, and Natasha goes back to the shore, retrieving the single person kayak and dragging it to a clearing to launch it out of sight of the canoe.

Fifteen minutes later Natasha is still dry, paddling the canoe back to the shore, and Clint, Sam and Steve are trying to drown each other in the middle of the glacial lake.

She hops out of the canoe, banking it, and sets the cooler on the dock. She pops open the top, and grabs two beers.

Handing them both to Bruce, she puts her shorts back on, and then sits on the towel he’d secured for her, leaning against his leg. He brushes his fingers against the cut from earlier. It’s healing already, but he doesn’t take his hand away, rubbing the side of his thumb along the tendons in her neck. She turns a little, rubs her cheek against his knee. He cups her head for a moment, then gently lets go.

***

Clint has gotten a hold of the banjo, cajoling more campfire songs from Tony. Sam joins in. He knows all the words. “I spent some time as a camp counselor,” he explains to Rhodes elevated eyebrows.

Natasha nudges Bruce over to the cooler, digging out the marshmallows, chocolate and graham crackers while he finds the hot dog spears. They’re far enough away not to be heard over the cacophony of instruments, casual bickering, and strains of Clint singing _Holla Back_.

“Seriously,” she says, “you were awfully calm earlier, when I brought up sex. What’s up with that?”

He gives her a little half smile, more sardonic than she expected, and shakes his head. “I’m full of surprises.”

“Hmph,” she says. When he doesn’t elaborate, she says, “You don’t have to prevaricate. You could just tell me.”

There’s a sliver of hurt, that he’d hide from her now when all day they’d been leaning hard into each other’s space. When he’d seemed happy to play along.

Bruce puts the spears down on the table and then angles so he’s bracketing her with his body, one hip on the picnic table, keeping the conversation to the two of them, even here out in the open.

She’d long since abandoned the hat, but she’s still wearing the shorts even as the sun had set. It’s chilly, though, and she shivers a little, rubs her arms. Bruce shrugs off his jacket and drapes it over her shoulders, tugging her closer by the lapels so she stands between his thighs.

She’d like to put her hands on him, on the curve of his neck, his chest, his waist, she’d like to step further into the circle of his arms so he could warm her. She’s not sure where these impulses are coming from; or rather, she knows, and it shames her. 

He doesn’t touch her, but he keeps hold of the edge of his coat, thumb rubbing along the zipper.

“I wasn’t lying,” he says finally. “But I’m not sure you want to hear the truth.”

“Try me,” she says, annoyance flaring. He takes a deep breath, and the casual amusement in his gaze is replaced by the underlying seriousness she’s more used to seeing. It grips something in her chest, tightening around a place she didn’t know she’d set aside for his pain.

“Okay,” he says, softly, thumb still going up and down the zipper, rhythmic and restless.

“You…” he gestures finally, opening his hand to gently rest his fingertips over her heart. “This is a costume. This is you fucking with Tony, and pretending for Maria, and making it impossible for me to sleep without imagining your legs wrapped around me. It’s a gentle calculation, a half step away from real. But it’s an illusion. There’s no...risk. This...version of you is an illusion. So that half-offer? That tease this morning? That was from the woman wearing the costume.”

She steps closer, not sure whether she’s flattered or pissed or just thoughtful. “Don’t underestimate her,” she says, not denying his assertion. 

He shakes his head, but gets close enough that she can feel his lips moving against her ear. “You’re dangerous in any form,” he murmurs, “But, there’s a difference between wanting...you, and wanting the fantasy. The risk is far different. I don’t have to do much to imagine what it would be like--the feel of her skin, the taste of her, to wonder what she’d sound like when we fucked. It’s as much an illusion as any kind of pornography, and while she’s far more appealing, it’s still fantasy.”

“There’s nothing wrong with fantasy,” Natasha says softly, biting down on her bottom lip. There was something unbearably appealing about him saying _fuck_ , knowing that he’s thinking about fucking her. Being fucked by her. She shivers again, but she’s warmed through.

He smiles at her then, but there’s no joy in it. He puts a tentative hand on her hip like he needs to ground himself and fears he’s touching a livewire instead.

“I don’t get to indulge in fantasies, at least not for more than a few moments,” he murmurs, a little chiding. “You know that. So what would be the point?”

“Fucking in a field,” she says. “Release and sunshine and hearing exactly what I’d sound like.”

He rubs a circle into her hip. “No,” he says. “Not for a fantasy.”

And then he backs up, just enough to meet her eyes and her breath catches. 

“The real thing, though? That might be worth any risk.”

He leaves her with that, heading back to the fire, marshmallows and chocolate held high.

Eventually, she follows with spears and graham crackers.

***

Maria is tossing and turning in her sleeping bag. It’s making it difficult to brood in peace.

Finally, a vocally dramatic puff of air sets Natasha off. She’s been staring at the ceiling of the tent, tracing the dividing line that creates the A-frame, chilled with sunburn, and equally heated with the memory of Bruce’s hand high on her thigh, sliding under the hem of her shorts. Of his dark eyes telling her she was a fantasy, of the tiny circles his thumb had made on her hip. Of his goddamned rejection.

Maria huffs again, and Natasha sighs. Maybe a distraction is in order. “What?”

Maria seizes the opening. “Stark’s being way too co-operative. He’s up to something.”

Her sunburn will fade by the morning but right now her shoulders are tight and hot. She wants to squirm, but doesn’t. She tries to focus on Maria’s agitation instead of her own. It’s not the rejection of her, Natasha tells herself, but the rejection of the concept. What was wrong with bodies and want and pleasure?

Nothing. (Not nothing, though, in context. She won’t deny Bruce his right to abstinence. To do what he needs to do to feel like he’s keeping the world safe.)

“You think he’s playing you?”

It’s easy to wind Hill up, especially when she’s clearly cruising for the opportunity.

“I know he’s playing me. That doesn’t bother me. It’s the how.”

“So you think he’s…” She lets that hang.

“He’s got a way to contact the outside world. I know it. I want to know what it is. I patted him down myself.”

Natasha offers a muttered hum of agreement. Stark’s an addict. He probably does have a stash. This ban on devices is pointless, but it’s Maria’s camp. Her rules. Their prerogative to break them.

She hears the clicking of Maria’s zipper. “I bet if I surprise him, I can catch him in the act.”

Natasha snorts. “Of checking his email?”

“Tell me he’s not up to something. He’s barely complained all day. He should be jonesing by now, feeding his need.”

Natasha rolls to her side as the tent illuminates, watching Maria fumble for flip flops with a light held under her armpit.

“What do you get out of being right?”

Maria shines her light under her chin. “Being right?”

Natasha snorts. “Well, that is satisfying. But what about the more...subtle transgressors?”

“Do tell?”

She shouldn’t, but Natasha’s never been above a little bit of shit-stirring. “I know for a fact Steve’s checking box scores somehow. And maybe I saw Thor driving in the stakes of his tent with Mjolnir.”

“Dammit, how are they even getting service out here? Seriously.”

“The god’s hammer is fine, but a cell phone is pissing you off?”

“Eh,” Maria shrugs. “Yes.” She crawls out to the edge of the tent. “Time to go bust some asses.”

“What’s the punishment?”

“I’ll think of something.” Hill looks over her shoulder, “And don’t think that just because you ratted out Rogers that I won’t find whatever you’re hiding.”

Natasha waits to get out of her bag until she hears a theatrical, “Aha!” echo through the campsite, followed by a yelp and loud, showy protests from Stark. 

Digging out the burner phone and a roll of widow’s bites, she contemplates her own contraband. Getting caught doesn’t bother her--Maria’s warpath is pure theater--but the pantomime doesn’t interest her either. 

She prefers to seek out a better hiding place. 

***

Bruce had turned out his reading light once the shuffling began. But it didn’t sound like bears or raccoons, so once he heard the muffled, “Motherfucker,” that signaled Steve tripping over something in the dark, he just waited out the hijinks.

The quiet snick of his own tent unzipping should have been more of a surprise. He lets Natasha get all the way inside before he snags her ankle. 

She stays silent, just flicks on her flashlight to shine in his eyes. He shields them with his free hand.

“Don’t you think it’s a mistake to wake me up in the middle of the night?” His voice is a low rumble, throatier than he’d hoped. 

“You weren’t really asleep.”

Bruce grunts and doesn’t say anything else. She sits on her haunches, leaving him to move his hand or practically fondle her ass. He doesn’t move, waits her out. It’s the story of the evening. The tent feels close and crowded in the dark, full of the warm scent of her skin. That she’s a few days past a bath just makes her a little muskier. Earthy. The smoke from the fire and the clean scent of dirt and night air are heady perfumes. He’d like to pant with the scent and feel of her, move his hand, slide it up her calf, her thigh.

Fondle her ass on purpose.

He clears his throat instead, and she finally moves the light from his eyes, resting it on the floor of the tent so that they’re mostly in the dark again.

Point, Natasha.

“So, what the hell is happening out there?” he asks.

He just catches the edge of her smirk in the ambient light, can hear it in her voice. “Panty raid.”

“Hmm. I don’t know if I want to be involved or just be glad I’m flying solo in here.”

Natasha leans forward so she’s on hands and knees.

“No real panties, I don’t think, unless Stark has wifi wired into his.” She pauses. “I suppose that’s a possibility.”

Bruce hums, all plausible deniability. He’ll never tell.

She crawls closer. “Hill’s on the warpath, determined to find all our little hidden secrets.”

“Oh,” Bruce says. “Like what?”

“You know. Modern conveniences. Cell phones, radios, tablets, vibrators.”

“Aren’t those generally battery powered? Plus, I don’t think they transmit...out?”

Her laugh is low and rich. It goes straight to his dick. Goddammit, he’d made a stand and he wasn’t wrong, but here in the dark where he can’t see her face it feels like a futile gesture.

“Weapons, too. Hill really wants this to be summer camp, not training camp. Even with all our training.”

As she says this, she pats around next to him and finds the opening of his sleeping bag by feel. She tugs down the zipper, laying her flashlight up by his pillow.

“I’m cold,” she says. 

“I can’t imagine that’s true.”

She reaches forward, unerringly finding his neck, and her fingers are cool enough to send a shiver through him. At least he blames it on the temperature.

“Hill,” he prompts, “Contraband.”

She’s so close now that he could take her by the waist, pull her forward, pull her down. Her weight would be delicious.

“It’s another game,” she says, “I think. Cover. But, I know Maria. She can have multiple agendas.”

“Cover?”

“She’s also trying to get away with something.”

Bruce smiles in the dark. “Are you?”

The bag lifts away from his body with a rush of cool air.

“Maybe,” she says. “Plus, I’ve got my own contraband that needs hiding.” She holds up what looks like a roll of quarters.

"Are you planning to do laundry or break someone's jaw?"

"They're bites."

"Are you asking me to _hold for you_?"

"No," she’s clearly lying, but it’s a play.

He takes them out of her hand delicately. "Am I going to electrocute myself?"

"Dunno. How sweaty are you?"

"I don't want to answer that."

“You’ll be fine.”

“Fine,” he says. “But this is a bad idea.”

“This is a great idea.”

Then she wriggles into the sleeping bag with him. He’s wearing sweatpants and an ancient t-shirt, but they don’t help. He can feel the warmth of her thighs through the thin material of her leggings. This is such a terrible idea. He puts a hand on the back of her neck to help them adjust to the confined space as she squirms.

Heat is pulsing off her neck, and it’s not just the heat generated between them.

“You’re burning up.” He reaches for the flashlight, but she stops him.

“It’s nothing. Sunburn. It’ll fade by morning.”

He spreads his hand out, fingers grazing her neck, gentle, not wanting to hurt. Trying to soothe. She rolls onto him a little, angling so that the bag accommodates them both, if barely.

It’s uncomfortable. 

It’s amazing.

He’s stymied. This is an epically bad idea. The roll of bites digs into his back and her breasts press against his chest, her hand on his waist. She breathes against him, a soft puff against his mouth and he’s not sure he can stop himself from kissing her. 

She moves a fraction closer, and he angles his head, and the corner of the tent flap lifts open and a nose peeks in. 

“Can I hide in here?”

Barton. 

“No,” Natasha says.

“Yes,” Bruce says, and she pinches his side.

Clint flashes his light onto Bruce, eyebrow shooting to his forehead. “That looks cozy.”

“I’m cold,” Natasha says.

“Maybe you should come out of there,” he suggests, “I don’t want to be traumatized.”

“I’m not traumatizing anyone,” she says.

“Untrue, I’m already disturbed.”

“I might be a little traumatized,” Bruce puts in. “This sleeping bag isn’t meant for two.”

“Traitor,” she says. “I should call Hill, tell her about your lamp.”

But she doesn’t go anywhere, and he moves his hand from her neck to the small of her back, fiddling with the hem of her t-shirt. He finally slips his fingers underneath to span her skin, canting her hips towards him.

He’s hardening between them. It doesn’t belie what he’d said earlier, not exactly. Bruce knows he’s the definition of mixed signals right now. His throat is so tight with desire, with loathing, with the effort of holding tight.

She’s everything he could want, pressed against him, and that’s the problem. He can’t deny the desire anymore. It’s not just for the luscious flesh, but for the bright, sharp, burning presence inside it. He can’t afford to give in to her playing, not when he wants something more. Something he really can’t ask for. She owes him nothing, and he owes her so very, very much.

Nat wiggles again, like she’s testing something and he desperately wishes he could just give in, enjoy this glorious gift she seems to be offering.

“ _Do it_ ,” taunts the part of him he hates most. “ _Give in. Let her use you, and leave you longing for more that she has no intention of giving. Leaving you_ pathetic _and_ needy.” 

Bruce turns his head, feels the silk of her hair against his cheek, turns away. She softens against him, a deliberate signal. Oh God.

It’s Clint, cross-legged and hunched, who keeps him in check. Not his presence, but the look on his face like if they were just fucking he’d lay back and mostly ignore it. Instead there’s something almost fraternal on his stoic face, and while Bruce knows the two spies are close, he gets the feeling that look is more for him.

He’s chastened by it.

Bruce curls his fingers into a fist tight as he can. Natasha stills completely, but it’s an exercise. He releases his fist, finger by finger, breathes through it, relaxes again so that he’s palming her spine.

“Nat,” Clint says. “I think you’re good, if you wanna go back to your tent.”

“Go away Clint,” she murmurs, then runs her nose along Bruce’s neck and it’s too much. Much too much. He could have talked this out, but now, he’s too far gone. He needs space. He tenses, stills, painfully aware that any stiffening on his part will signal something bigger for her. Warnings of his monster. They’ve been training for that very thing, after all.

His limbs are rigid, fingers flat, no longer caressing her back. 

“Natasha,” he says, warning enough.

“Oh.” Her tone shifts. The softness disappears as her own limbs tense. Her knee angles, a potential weapon.

“You need to go,” he says. He hates that Clint is seeing this.

The lullaby protocols have been primarily between the two of them, bringing in the others only to familiarize them with signals and techniques, to test out situations and threats. 

Clint is her backup. But he’s Bruce’s too. And now he’s waiting, reading the tension. 

Spies. 

_Fuck._

“Sorry,” she says to Bruce, moving off of him in one fluid motion. He lets his hands fall to his side and turns his head away.

He doesn’t say anything, and she crouches at the edge of the tent closure for a moment. 

Clint murmurs her name, but she just slips out of the tent into the cool night air.

***

Clint hangs out for another half an hour, burning cell battery watching DIY fail videos on YouTube and narrating them to Bruce.

Before he leaves, he says, casual as anything, “Nat’s been a lot of things, done a lot of things. Sometimes, she pushes, just to see what will crack. She’s done it with me.”

Bruce wonders why Clint thinks he doesn’t know that. “It’s often a good thing.” He feels protective of her.

Cling shrugs, “Nat has to operate on the assumption that she knows best. Particularly these days. I don’t know if that’s relevant, and I hope I didn’t kick her out when you wanted her to stay.”

“I didn’t need saving,” Bruce says finally, but without condemnation.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, doc,” Clint says quietly, “But I wasn’t actually worried about saving you.”

It’s quiet by the time Clint leaves, and after tossing and turning for several hours, Bruce gives up on sleep and rises. It’s barely dawn, brisk enough out to raise goose bumps, but he can’t stand being cooped up in the tent anymore, consumed by the feel of Natasha’s thigh pressed against his, the line of her back a perfect resting place for his hand, the running internal condemnation in his head-- stupid, selfish, wasteful, arrogant. Worthless. Ready to risk disaster for the feeling of skin and bone and muscle and...woman in his arms, despite his already stated misgivings.

It’s a familiar feeling, being awake, chilled, tired, uncertainty looming in front of him, the smell of campfire and ash in the air. He looks out towards the lake, and the isolation seeps into his bones. He’s out here, in the middle of nowhere. He could take his pack, the arctic-rated sleeping bag, the thermal socks, walk into the forest and disappear. Leave behind the nagging frustration of want, of identity forged with these people that feels like he’s living in someone else’s skin, playing pretend. These unsafe safety measures, this attempt to tame his beast. 

It’s not a retreat if he’s moving forward, right? Two steps, and he’d be gone.

He turns back to the remains of the night’s fire, covered and contained, the stacked kindling ready to stoke it again and thinks of the mingled harmonies. Tony’s burst of sardonic laughter, Steve’s war against bugs, Sam’s easy laughter and keen insight. Natasha...

He drops his head, then unlocks the bear box to get the coffee pot and coffee, starts the pot on the fire after stirring the coals until they smolder. Clouds are darkening in the sky, rain a legitimate threat, but he doesn’t think Maria’s going to call the next exercise on account of weather.

If it rains, he won’t get to fish. He gathers his gear, including the small thermos that he fills with coffee, and heads to the quiet side of the lake. If he misses the presence of a leggy redhead with a wicked sense of irony, he also tries very hard not to mind.


	5. Camp Ivanhoe

There’s coffee in the coals and Stark in a lawn chair wrapped in an unzipped sleeping bag, but no Bruce. The air is thick with humidity, sky the flat gray of impending rain, and Natasha feels as thick and heavy as the atmosphere. She’d slept like shit and her face is puffy, eyes bruised. 

Hill had returned to the tent far later than Natasha, cheeks flushed and eyes bright, falling asleep quickly with a raucous snore. Maria was clearly thrilled with the turn of her evening.

Nat could have slept through the snore, but it was harder to drift off in the heat of her chagrin, of the shiver of fear that’d run through her body as Bruce had tensed beneath her. Exhaustion and injured pride weigh her down.

Vitriol runs thick in her veins this morning, the soupcon of self-loathing she’ll allow herself, the rising frustration with pretending to be pleasantly, placidly invested in this goddamned training exercise. She both trusts and supports Maria, but the facade is wearing thin. This feels like a waste of time.

Stark’s hair is squashed up on one side of his head and even his beard looks askew.

In Bruce’s absence, Natasha wants nothing more than to lash out at Stark. He’s an easy target, and she moves to the coffee pot, fighting words on her lips when Rhodes appears, stretching his arms up over his head at the edge of the fire. The stretch pulls his shirt up, and Natasha spots the distinct bruising of a hickey.

Well. Good for Hill. That explains her mood. If it had been Stark, he surely would look less grumpy.

Rhodes catches her eye but doesn't give anything away and a little of the acid on her tongue pools away. She’s can’t resent those who find pleasure, however ephemeral, in each other.

“Coffee?” She holds up the pot to Rhodes who nods.

Stark shifts, “I could use a refill.”

She ignores him.

“Rain’s coming,” Clint scrubs a hand through his hair. He’s on breakfast duty with Steve who is cracking eggs at the prep table. 

Thor is hand squeezing orange juice into a pitcher, which is both unexpected and hypnotic. There’s a rhythm there, a pattern to the men moving around these makeshift stations, working together. 

Huh, Natasha thinks. Team work. Maybe this isn’t a complete waste of time after all.

“Stark,” she says, “What’s with the…” She gestures up and down at his cocoon of down and nylon.

“My feet are cold.”

Rhodes leans in conspiratorially. “He ran out of socks.”

“Untrue. I packed enough socks, but the last couple of pairs got wet.”

“How is that different?” Rhodey smirks.

There are a number of questions she could ask, but she’s forestalled by Sam bearing a pair of socks. 

“They’re Steve’s, but they’re dry.”

Stark takes the socks, pensive. Finally, he says, “Thanks,” like he really has to take it under advisement.

Natasha sits on the picnic table, a little removed, and watches them. Stark puts the socks on, and then eventually shuffles back to his tent. When he returns, he’s dressed and thunder cracks in the distance.

“Banner’s gonna miss breakfast,” Hill says, stretching into a lean, hands over her head. She’s still bright-eyed, but doesn’t bother looking over at Rhodes.

Stark taps his cheek. “You gonna let that stand?”

Hill shrugs. “He’s also gonna get rained on.”

***

They get the rain awning up over the large tent right before the rain hits despite a monumentally stupid argument between Clint and Sam about where to pound in the pegs and then nearly losing it to a gust of wind. Thor had to chase it down. That alone, the big god in board shorts and flip flops running after a striped sail of fabric, had nearly made the endeavor worth it. 

Stark and Rhodes haul tables out of the the van, bickering as the wind pulls at the awkward shapes, and Steve carries multiple camp chairs under each arm.

“Christ, Cap, we could make two trips,” Sam says.

“I don’t like rain.”

Natasha takes the chairs and points Steve in the direction of the craft bins. It doesn’t take long for him to sort things to his liking, covering the tables in string and glue, popsicle sticks and colorful plastic threads.

Bruce makes it back just as Maria is setting up a long length of butcher paper and tempera paint clipped to a makeshift clothesline.

His hair is sprinkled with water, glasses tucked into a jacket pocket. He brushes the water from his shirt and pants onto the damp ground.

“Sorry,” he says vaguely as he folds back the flap on the tent. “For missing breakfast, and…” He gestures at the crafts table.

Hill gives him a long look, but doesn’t say anything.

“Catch anything?” Clint is sitting in the middle of the lanyard station, ignoring Sam’s protesting pokes in his ass with a stick. He holds his coffee cup across the top and sips.

Bruce shakes his head. “Nothing biting. The rain maybe.”

As if on cue, the rain pounds down on the tent, wind whipping the the structure so hard it shakes.

Natasha is laying out paint brushes and wash stations. She doesn’t look up at the exchange but she can feel Bruce’s gaze on her. She’s not ready to give him anything yet, and doesn’t feel up to an enigmatic smile.

The rain has started in earnest, pounding on the top of the lean-to which is already heating up from the warmth of the bodies crammed into it.

Thor holds up a handful of sticks and a sack of yarn. “What will we do with these, then?”

He’s asked this at every station. Maria wearily gestures him to her.

These are people Natasha likes, more than likes in many cases. But the sheer level of masculine jostling as they’re hemmed in by weather and proximity, not to mention the edgy tension when she looks over at Bruce has her ready to bolt for the hills. She’d rather wait out the rain alone in her tent, but her promise to Hill to be a good soldier and play along has her committed to at least one project.

“We’ve got arts and crafts,” Stark says, picking up a box of popsicle sticks and shaking them. “Does this mean we’re also gonna break for skits and bug juice?”

“Just choose a goddamn station and make something pretty,” Hill orders.

*** 

Sam weaves blue and gold into a perfect lanyard keychain. Tony’s efforts look like a broken finger, swollen lopsided bands of red and yellow.

Bruce squints at it. “You have an engineering degree,” he says. “How are you so bad at this?”

Rhodes braids a ten thread friendship bracelet taped to the table as Steve whittles a piece of wood with a decidedly phallic bent.

“It’s a whistle,” he says defensively, when Clint sticks his forefinger into the rounded circle of his other hand, making boning motions.

Carefully constructed popsicle stick cabins form a U-shape in front of Bruce, yarn-haired inhabitants fleeing the structures with their hands up as if escaping from a fire.

Bruce has always enjoyed dioramas.

Clint is making a yarn-baby Hulk to complete the scene, his black and red god’s eye abandoned. 

Maria is making little fertility goddesses, or maybe snowmen, out of modeling clay.

She surveys her domain. “Where’s Romanoff?”

Bruce looks up, glances at Clint, who shrugs. “Beer run.”

He hadn’t realized that she’d left, which isn’t a surprise but means that his studied effort not to address the night before had worked. To an extent. He’d effectively tuned out the world. But he realizes, with a tightening in his gut, that it just feels like being an asshole. He’s not protecting anyone by avoiding the issue.

Maria tightens her mouth. “Alright, play time’s over. We’re going to collaborate. Barton, get the butcher paper and paint.”

Steve raises a hand. “Seriously, shouldn’t we wait for Romanoff?”

Maria sighs. “Not if she really went to get beer.”

***

Training exercises and team building are all fine and good, Natasha thinks as she hikes up the path through the forest. But more than an hour of Elmer’s glue and beads is enough to make her want to punch someone in the throat.

She’d happily draw for days with the Barton kids, but spending a claustrophobic afternoon with sniping superheroes wasn’t worth the yarn burns. 

Having Bruce across the table, mouth set hard, making a popsicle stick diorama of destruction had just made it worse.

It was his initial absence that had grated at her. Or rather, their reaction to it. Like they’re all just waiting for Bruce to not show up, breath held. Relieved maybe, when he doesn’t, because then at least they’ll know. 

Worse, it’s a secondary concern amongst the jostling over breakfast and weather and other preparations. Someone will bitch that Banner’s not there, and someone else will shrug, giving him the pass they all give him which is starting to feel more like an insult than the kindness she knows they all consider it to be.

And he knows they do it, both relieved, and, she suspects, a little resigned. But he still takes advantage, appearing when he should just often enough.

Natasha wonders if that’s how it’ll be one day. They’ll all be in a tizzy of joint outrage, their collective agendas and personalities sparking off each other on a bad day, the noise like cover fire. And he’ll just be gone, using it to slip away unseen.

That thought hurts more than it should, and she brushes the water away from her face. Her feet are cold and she really doesn’t enjoy hiking in the rain. She should have taken one of the vans, but she didn’t want to ask for the keys, nor did she want to challenge Hill’s intentions by stealing them.

Plus, she thought maybe the hike would cool her heels. Instead, it’s just making her wet and cold and cranky with everyone, herself included.

The gas station they’d passed coming into the park is over the ridge, according to her calculation and the map. She just has to cross this small valley and go back up. Maybe she’ll see about charming someone into a ride back, which may be necessary if she wants to grab much more than a twelve pack.

***

Bruce needs some air, needs to piss, to not breathe in tempera paint and testosterone for a few minutes, so he heads outside.

The rain has stopped, but the sky is still a solid, placid gray.

Covered in mud, from the hood of her poncho to the soles of her boots, Natasha is standing at the entrance to her tent. She’s sopping wet, filthy and as forlorn as he’s ever seen her.

He’s been hating himself all day, more so since she disappeared earlier. While no one was particularly concerned that Natasha would meet trouble she couldn’t handle, Bruce didn’t like the idea of not knowing where, exactly, she’d gone.

Or rather, he didn’t like the idea that he shouldn’t ask, that he shouldn’t worry or care because he’d spent the day before indulging in a fantasy then slammed the door on it with a brisk brutality--if that had contributed to her absence--and he’s pretty sure it did--he doesn’t have the right to express unasked for concern.

Now she’s back, covered in misadventure. Natasha looks up sharply, always aware of being watched, and catches him staring.

She shrugs, looks back at the tent, and reaches for the zipper.

Fuck, maybe he can fix it.

“Nat,” he says, “Natasha.”

She stills her hand, and he jogs over, not wanting to risk her ignoring him.

“What is it?” she asks, as he approaches. “I’m a little busy…” And she laughs at that, except it’s not the bright rich chuckle he loves, but something small and thin.

“What happened?”

“Nothing,” she shrugs. “Guys got their rig stuck. I helped them get it out.”

He shakes his head, and she quirks her mouth. “They were really sweet, and god, so very dumb,” she continues. “Had dug it in well enough that it took three people to get it out, and we still had to walk to the gas station for a tow.”

He makes a face, trying to hide a fond smile. He doesn’t want to come off as condescending. But he’s charmed in spite of himself that she went off to clear her head and ended up saving some misguided idiots from their own stupidity.

“But now I’m cold and wet and filthy and I don’t want to get mud and water all over everything, but I can’t stay in these clothes any longer. I’m freezing.”

“Can I help?” 

He waits. She gives him that look, the one that says she's fine, to go away, and then her mouth softens, something tired and honest in her eyes.

“Maybe,” she says. 

He clenches his fist, fighting the desire to touch her. 

“Yes,” she relents, finally. “Please.”

“Gimmee just a second,” Bruce says. “Don’t go anywhere.”

He comes back with a duffel and a plastic bag, and holds out his hand.

“C’mon,” he says.

The fishing spot is still peaceful, the waves lapping gently at the shore. Bruce takes off his waterproof coat, puts it on the ground, sets the duffel on it and then helps Natasha peel off the poncho. He squats to untie her boots, which are stiff with mud. He puts them in a plastic bag as she peels off her socks.

Shampoo and a brush and a towel, warm sweats and Clint’s ratty shower sandals are tucked into the duffel. He digs out the sandals first.

She rolls her lip against her teeth.

“Okay,” she says.

She strips off her shirt and leggings, drops them into the bag with the shoes. She’s standing there in her bra and underwear, mud clumps in her hair and caked on her cheekbones, her neck and hands. It’s even on her waist somehow, ringing her lower calves. Red scrapes steal down the back of her thigh, and a coloring bruise graces her bicep. Bruce sees green for a second, but it’s just wear and tear from her kindness. 

She rubs her arms briskly, then steps into Clint’s shoes and holds her hand out for the soap.

He takes a bigger breath.

Instead of handing her the toiletries, Bruce unbuttons his shirt. She cocks her head and watches. He fumbles with the button, and her eyes catch on his hands, mesmerized, but he’s not trying to tease. He tries to work faster, but the blood beating in his ears is keeping him distracted.

“Let me,” she says, brusque, and then her hands deftly move down his chest, helping him shrug out of his shirt. Knuckles drag along his belly, so light he could have been imagining it, then hover over his fly.

“I got it,” he says, voice rough in his ears, and he undoes the zipper, trying to toe off his shoes at the same time. She holds his upper arm to steady him, and then just waits as he folds his pants.

“It's going to be cold,” she says.

“I’ve got this,” he says. “It's fine.”

She leads the way into the water without a start or stutter. It’s so cold that Bruce hops backwards, but Natasha moves into the lake like the aching chill of it doesn’t matter.

He can’t do anything but follow, even as his brain and his balls and even the Other Guy huddle for warmth and taunt him.

When she’s up to her ribs, Natasha ducks under quickly. So quickly, that he finds himself reaching for her, even as he’s trying to cycle his breathing against the cold. He starts hopping, making his way towards her, not sure if he’s warming up or courting hypothermia.

He runs hot, this shouldn’t have much of an effect, but it’s jarring against the chilly water.

Nat scrubs soap between her hands.

“Help me with my hair,” she says.

He pours shampoo into his palm, and she tips back her head even as she’s running soap over her face and arms and neck, and then he’s digging his fingers into her hair, working the shampoo into a lather, combing out the mud. It’s strangely intimate, although surprisingly unsexual for all their near nakedness.

The deep, penetrating cold of the water, the instinct he’s fighting to get out and get dry, her very matter of factness, not to mention the thought of Clint’s ratty shower sandals, these make the whole thing feel like a farce.

It makes him grin.

She must be catching a little of his mood because she smirks around the soap and says, “Does this count as skinny dipping?” 

She cups her hands and splashes her face, and him in the process, gasps at the cold and ducks down, scrubbing the rest of her body with the soap. Bruce jogs in place, rubbing his arms while she submerges herself in the water, and comes back up rinsed clean.

“Fuck that’s cold,” she says, and before he can think about it, she springs up, cold arms around his neck, chilled body against his, her nipples hard, solid points against his chest, her thighs pressed to his briefly.

He catches her. 

She’s freezing and wet and glorious. He grabs the back of her thighs, hauls her up so her legs wrap around his waist, Barton’s shower sandals digging into his ass.

She squeezes her thighs, hitching herself up higher, looking down at him like she’s looking at something, someone, worth seeing. Her face is clean, hair slicked back, eyes bright, and he’d maybe stand here in this cold glacial lake for the rest of time if she kept looking at him like that.

His heart hammers with cold and adrenaline and longing, beating so hard in his throat that he can feel the reverberation. He tightens his grip, tries to slow it, but she puts her fingers to his pulse, eyes still locked with his. She counts the beats, but there’s no fear there. She’s calming him. Her hand is warm on his throat and her breasts are ivory and goose-pimpled and she’s utterly lovely. Mesmerizing

“Breathe,” she says, and it sounds like a promise. He releases his lungs, breathes deeply, leaning infinitesimally closer. She rises up further, strong thighs all the leverage she needs, and then shoves him down under the water.

By the time he bobs back up, gasping and spluttering, she’s halfway to shore. The throaty peal of her laughter is all the prompting he needs to chase her back to land.

***

A community of popsicle stick figurines have been added to the village when he gets back. 

They’re carrying the Hulk around on their shoulders despite the squashed popsicle cabins. A yarn baby Godzilla lies defeated between them.

“For the record,” Bruce says, “Hulk and Godzilla would be friends.”

“Did you ask him?” Clint challenges.

“Yes,” Bruce says.

“Thought the rain had stopped,” Tony says pointedly, looking at Bruce’s hair.

He lifts a shoulder. “Yeah,” he says.

Tony waggles his eyebrows, making exaggerated head motions at Natasha.

“Yes Stark,” she says, deadpan. “We went skinny dipping without you.”

He turns his head sharply, taking in her change of clothes, factoring in a hundred other things and just says, finally, “Spoilsport.”

“Beer has been acquired,” Natasha says. “But for what it’s worth, you lollygaggers owe me big time.”

Hill holds up a brush. “Speaking of lollygaggers, you two need to add to the circle painting.”

“It is very inspiring,” Thor says, “to witness collaborative creativity.” Natasha realizes that what she took for gold streaks on his face are actually drips of yellow paint. He points to the sheet on the ground. “I’m eager to see what you have to contribute.”

The sheet is, quite frankly, a hot mess of paint and id in overlapping circles.

Hill sighs. “The goal is to use your words and manners to make art in your circles and make space for others to create in them as well. But then Stark and Wilson both wanted the red paint, and Steve kicked over the black, and well…”

“It’s a fucking Jackson Pollock nightmare,“ Clint adds, “But hey. It’s art.”


	6. Camp Tigerclaw

There are five kayaks and eight unhappy campers. 

The math seems wrong.

Sam’s constant good humor seems to be fading, aided perhaps by last night’s disaster of a weenie roast and the discovery this morning that the breakfast burritos were _still_ frozen, leaving them to eke out a meager breakfast from oranges and hamburger buns. He crosses his arms over his chest scowling at the kayaks lined up on the shore..

He’s shirtless, so it’s still a good look for him, Natasha thinks. The heat this morning is oppressive. It’s sticky, buggy and still. The prior day’s rain had only made the humidity worse. No one slept well, and the seams are fraying on this, the final full day of the excursion.

Thor, Rhodes and Barton have also foregone shirts for the exercise. Bruce and Stark are wearing ancient t-shirts and swim trunks.

Steve’s wearing a rash guard. Natasha’s not sure why, if it’s modesty, decorum or if he just gets tired of the stares.

“I don’t want to say no outright, “ Sam says, “But this looks like some of us are going in that butt-puckering lake while others are not.”

Hill plants an oar in the sand like an avenging angel and says, “The goal is to not let that person be you.”

She doesn’t look amused, but she does gesture down beside her where the big cooler rests.

“But, to compensate for this morning’s rough start, I will also offer beer as additional incentive.”

Sam squints, “I'm kind of beered out.” There are answering nods, however tentative.

Hill sighs, “Then pick your damned poison.”

***

They’re in the middle of the lake, attempting to execute a complicated maneuver of swapping crew members between boats without dumping anyone into the drink when three Ray-Ban wearing inner tubers drift by.

“Little chilly for tubing,” Rhodes calls out as he shoves one of them back out of his course of travel.

The tuber is dangling his feet in the water. They’re a deep bluish white compared to the rest of his body which is sporting an uncomfortable pink that screams sunburn. His hair is a shocking orange.

“Sorry,” he says, waving, then sits up so fast he nearly knocks himself out of the inner tube. “Hey,” he says, and starts waving, “Hey, Red. Hey, remember us?”

He gestures behind him where a burnt sienna skinned kid with a riot of kinky copper-tinged curls is trying to get a trilby to stay put on his head.

Natasha is straddling two kayaks, and doing her best not to hit Clint with an oar even if he maybe deserves it. She can’t really wave back, but she raises her chin in greeting.

“She saved our bacon,” the freckled ginger says, then squints. 

Sam sighs. 

“Wait,” the ginger is definitely gonna tumble out of the tube soon. “You all look so familiar.” 

He stares at Sam, then peers over at the far kayak where Steve and Thor are defining precarious as the try to move even a little bit without capsizing.

They’ve already overturned the kayak twice, and no one is looking forward to a third trip in.

“We’ve got those kinds of faces,” Sam says, and Rhodes gives the ginger a good shove with his oar and a friendly, fuck you kind of wave.

Thor over balances, and as he falls forward he grabs on to Stark, who is keeping Natasha balanced. They all go into the water.

It’s in the angry, bickering scramble to right the kayaks and get back out of the frigid lake that Steve spots another innertuber near the shore.

He shoves at Stark, who is trying to hop back onto the middle kayak. Stark shoves him back and Rhodey holds the boat steady. Steve goes to repeat the shoving and then tips the boat.

Stark just gives him a look as flat as his sopping hair.

Steve gestures, “Doesn’t that cooler look familiar?”

“Motherfucker,” Stark says, “They’re stealing our beer.”

“I thought we were tired of beer,” Rhodes says.

“It's the principal,” Steve grits out.

Natasha knows the expression on Steve’s face -- it slots into place like putting on a perfectly tailored dress. The aura of command was meant for his even features. It animates him, shifts him from good natured asshole to Captain.

“Rhodes, you’re best with steering, you get in the front. Banner, plot our trajectory. Romanoff, I want you and Clint ready to go on the prows. Wilson, Thor and I will run retrieval and paddle while Stark provides a distraction.”

“We’re going to make them pay,” Tony says.

***

When Hill finally finds them six hours later on the other side of the lake, installed in the bar connected to a rustic lodge, she looks less than thrilled.

“Pull up a chair,” Tony says.

Bruce knows from Natasha that Hill had spent the last couple of hours at the DNR station begging forgiveness for her charges. The park rangers had ended up with the beer, appreciating it more than explanations and apologies.

Nothing had been permanently damaged.

Hill accepts the shot of tequila Bruce pushes in front of her, and asks, “How’d you even get rooms here? They’re sold out for the season.”

“Money talks,” Rhodes says. “It talks, and when Tony throws it around, it also shouts, wheedles, cajoles and does a shimmy.”

A smile teases the edge of Maria’s mouth.

“Wanna see what Tony’s money bought me?” Rhodes asks.

“Later,” she says, then glances around. Clint’s gleefully playing pool with Thor, and Steve is listening intently as Sam goes through the jukebox. “Where’s Romanoff?”

Bruce gestures to a tiny square of linoleum to the side of the jukebox that’s serving as a makeshift dance floor. “Allowing the adoring fans to play homage.”

The innertubers were part of a larger group on vacation, and all of them were making use of the linoleum squares to dance. They’d coaxed Nat up, and when she finished dancing with one, another popped up.

“Chris with an h--or was it Darius?--wanted a dance.”

“Cris without an h,” Bruce says. “No, Christopher. Right?”

“Omar,” Rhodes breaks in. “Omar gave her the sad puppy eyes.”

“Frankly,” Stark says, “Omar really wants to dance with Rogers, but can’t bring himself to ask.”

The bar is filling up, possibly due to the rumors that the Avengers have taken over, and the little dance floor is struggling to accommodate its guests.

Despite the cramped quarters, Natasha is learning a complicated line dance from Omar. Her cotton sundress brushes against her pale legs as she moves, arms gracefully balancing herself, fingertips resting on the young man’s arm.

The line of her neck between the thin straps and her brilliant hair is a beacon. Bruce feels silly, slap-happy with the warmth he feels for her in that moment.

Or it could be the tequila.

“You did act like a team,” Hill says. “Finally. Because of beer. And punk kids.”

“Who’s bar tab I’m funding,” Stark cuts in.

“It’s the least we can do,” Sam shrugs. “I don’t think Chris with an h will ever recover from the sight of Romanoff stepping off that kayak, oar in hand, like a goddamned Valkyrie.”

Thor booms out a laugh that fills the small bar. “She is a mighty warrior, and perhaps a warrior goddess, but still too short for a Valkyrie.” He calls out to Natasha, face clouding briefly. “No offense intended.”

She shakes her head, smiling. “None taken.”

***

“Coming.” Bruce responds to the knock on the door with more than a hint of annoyance, unsurprised that Barton lost his key. He’d been matching the tubers shot for shot.

Natasha leans in the doorway, eyebrow raised. “Sorry to interrupt,” she says.

He shakes his head. “It’s fine.”

She looks into the room, glancing around, and he steps aside, gesturing her in. “You turned in early,” she says, “Missed your dance.”

He’s got a finger marking his page in his book, which he holds up like evidence. She keeps the dubious eyebrow in place.

Bruce sits down on the edge of the bed, and opens the book to note the line he’s on then closes it, placing it next to him, looks at his lap.

“Too many people,” he says, “too quickly.”

She crowds him a little, standing so her knees are pressed against his and he sees her raise her hand like she’s going to touch him, but she doesn’t.

He can feel that withheld touch, and he aches with it. For it.

“You’re not a threat to a crowd like that,” she says softly. “Not these days. Maybe not ever.”

He glances up at her, at the tilt of her head, the hand still held like she wants to reach out as much as he wants her to.

“It’s not…” he tries to articulate the issue. “You know I’m fine.Tony, too. Me, most of the time. But I get...tired of the rest of them. Of keeping them on edge. Forcing a sense of responsibility on my friends when they just want to have a good time. Clint doesn’t need to be watching me _and_ the squirrelly tourists.”

She does touch him then, fingers twining into his hair, and god help him, he lets her, tilting his head like a cat. She tugs just a little, and shocks zing down his spine, his belly, his balls tightening with how good her touch is.

“Clint’s a big boy,” she says, “So’s Steve, Thor, the rest. No one…”

She pauses, and he’s so damned grateful because she won’t lie to him.

“We trust you,” she says. “I trust you.”

And that’s true, even if she did go rigid the other night with justified fear. But maybe that’s the thing he longs for most in Natasha, the thing that most scares him -- her fear and her courage lie on the same plane. One doesn’t cancel out the other. She holds tight to that fear, but it doesn’t shape her. She could look at him, care for him, touch him with this gentleness bordering on reverence and still put a bullet in his brain tomorrow. It’s a glorious revelation.

Something true. Something real. This isn’t a facade.

He risks a caress of his own, touching the back of her knee. The skin is so soft. He could slide his hand up, banding the back of her thigh. He could ruche up the cotton sundress, pull her to his mouth, breath in her sex through the cotton panties (he knows they’ll be cotton because the dress is costuming, and she plans her personas down to the smallest detail), mouth her, breath hot against her cunt lips.

It would be glorious. Someday, maybe. He can begin to entertain the idea of a someday, and that thickens his throat. Hope.

He’s not there yet though, but still he draws circles on the back of her knee like he can’t help himself, watching the cotton flutter over her belly as a shiver runs through her. She tilts her pelvis towards him, and pulls back his head to meet her gaze, running her thumb over his jaw.

Her pupils are dilated. She bends her knee and places it between his thighs, so close to his dick it’s either a threat or a promise, and says, “What are you reading?”

***

The lights are low in the room, typical of Bruce, who isn’t much for fluorescents.

He’s got a neat little LED camp light on the bedside table. It gives off a cool blue glow the color of the arc reactor. Natasha doesn’t think that’s a coincidence.

Heat radiates off of him. He’s searing her skin where he’s cupping the back of her thigh. His hair is rough silk between her fingers.

“I finished the fishing poetry,” he says, which isn’t what she asked, and she looks down at the book title.

“So you’re reading _The Iliad_?” 

There’s a long pause.

“The golden soldiers,” he says. “Your spear, it reminded me, and I haven’t read it since college. They recommended this translation because it retains the poetry of the original.”

She reaches down, flips through, sees that it’s got the ancient Greek on one side, English on the other.

Running her finger over the words, she reads a few lines of Greek out loud.

“Impressive. Do you know what it means?”

“Right there? It’s more fucking ship cataloguing. It’s endless.” She traces her fingers over the verses. Even mid-poem, the context loss, the rhythm is beautiful.

His voice is quiet when he says, “It reminds me of you, a little. Or rather, I thought of you. And that damned boat, you holding that oar like you held the spear that morning...it felt appropriate to read this weekend anyway and then...”

She swallows. “Read some to me?”

“Natasha,” he starts.

“No, I just...I like your voice. I like hearing you talk, and it’d be weird to be here and ask you to just talk. So could you read a little? Then I’ll go.”

The pause is drawn out. “You don’t have to.” He says, pauses, clarifies. “Go, you don’t have to go.”

He smells like sun and lake water, unnecessary sunscreen and a little sweat from the bar. The grassy undertone of his actual scent is still clean, but he’s earthy. She’d like to roll around in the smell, pull him onto her, leave the room stinking of him.

Instead, she hands him the book and removes her knee. He scoots back on the bed, awkwardly fluffing up the pillows.

She kicks off her shoes and crawls onto the mattress beside him, resting her head in her hand, curled up on her side.

He gives her a long look, and she nods at the book.

He skims around, and it feels like waffling until he clears his throat.

“ _I wish that strife would vanish away from among gods and mortals, and gall, which makes a man grow angry for all his great mind, that gall of anger that swarms like smoke inside of a man's heart and becomes a thing sweeter to him by far than the dripping of honey_.” 

The words wrap around her tightly, as beautiful as his fear and his rage and his heat, as the low choke of his voice as he finishes the passage.

“I read it in Greek,” she says, “As a child. It sounds better when you read it. The poetry is right. We studied that passage, learning how to use it as inspiration. Anger clouds judgement. It can be used.”

“I don’t want to think about what it’s used for.”

“Anger can be like honey, thick and comforting. Warming.”

“It never feels like that to me,” he says.

She touches his hand where he’s holding the book. “You always give away the burn,” she says, “and all you get are the ashes.”

Bruce swallows hard, and his voice, when he speaks, reverberates through her. “And if I wanted the flames?”

She rolls onto her knees and holds out her hand. “How about a dance instead?”

He follows her with his eyes as she backs off the bed. Finally, tentatively, he stands beside her and reaches out to put a hand on her hip.

It sears through her and she revels in it, wraps her hand around his neck, holds up her other hand.

“No music,” he murmurs, then matches her palm to palm. Their fingers curl together. They stand that way and she waits for momentum to guide them, for her impatience, for his skittish avoidance.

Instead, he pulls her just a little towards him. She relaxes her hips, sways and he sways with her. They’re loosely pressed together, enough so that their clothes hush against each other, his inner arm against her ribs, the twine of his fingers, the warmth of his skin. 

They’re moving to some inner tune, bodies in sync. She turns her head, puts it against his chest, and grips his hand. 

She doesn’t feel safe. This isn’t safety.

It’s better.

The click of the lock is barely an interruption, more like a natural segue for the gentle swaying, the breathing in tandem.

Clint opens the door, and Bruce slowly lets her go, and she steps back, back into herself.

“Good night,” she says. “Good night.”

“Not good night,” Barton says, stepping into the room. “It's the fucking last night of camp, kids. There's a bonfire and a talent show.”

Bruce gapes just a little.

“Well,” Clint amends, “there's a big ass fire pit and the lodge has a band. Plus I think Stark may have signed Rhodes up for late night karaoke. So put on some pants, Banner.”

He changes while Natasha finds the hoodie she'd worn the other night, and she tucks her hands into both their arms as they lead her to the fire.

***

It's crowded enough that Sam’s pressed nearly as close to Bruce as Natasha is.

Rhodes and Hill are missing in action, but Tony and Steve are representing them by belting out _Piano Man_ with the inner tubers.

The fire crackles and Bruce barely flinches.

Sam shakes his head. “Last night of Y camp there were always teary songs about friendship. Not this singalong version of ‘there once was a girl from Nantucket’ one upmanship.”

The band shifts to _Auld Lang Syne_ at that and while Sam snorts disgust, his voice lifts up. 

Bruce sings because he knows the words, and because Nat reaches back, slim strong fingers twining with his own.

***

Hill hands back electronics on the van.

Bruce accepts his headphones and wraps them around his neck, plugs them into his phone, but doesn’t turn them on.

Stark sits next to him, clutching his gear like a man seeing water in the desert. It’s a showy front. They all know he’s been cheating.

Natasha tucks her feet up into the chair, and leans her head against the window. The sun hits her hair, and Bruce lets himself watch her, lets himself enjoy it.

She turns, catches his eye, and her smile is luminous and tooth and real.

“One hundred bottles of beer on the wall,” Wilson bellows.

“Seriously,” Steve grouses, but Clint joins in. “One hundred bottles of beer…”

Bruce puts his headphones on.

***

Natasha hesitates for a moment, sorting her laundry from her travel bag. The woodsmoke and earth smell is surprisingly welcome. They’ve only been home for a few days, settling back into the routines of training and mission prep, paperwork and surveillance and life in the tower.

It’s not so much that things have changed as that they’re the same, but with a twist. Wilson’s around more, showing up for breakfast this morning and staying for an afternoon meditation session with Bruce.

Rhodes has sat in with Banner and Stark to go over a few suit upgrades, and to discuss some of his own engineering designs.

Hill has been smiling more.

Natasha pulls the final item out of the bag -- Bruce’s thefted sweatshirt. She holds it up to her face, the smoke and earth scent matched with the soap and skin and lake water. Her shampoo is a sweet counterpoint. 

She puts the other clothes in the washing machine, and dons the sweatshirt, moving to the side of the bed to flip through the copy of _The Iliad_ Bruce had slipped into her bag on the way back from camp.

Yarn-baby Hulk gazes at her from the dresser, flopped over, mouth an open howl into the void.

She sets him to rights, and heads out to meet his human counterpoint for dinner.

Cuban, she thinks. Or Senegalese. Maybe Southern Indian. Something new to put in his book with heat and spice.

They’ll eat, and talk, come back to the tower, press their hands together to practice the lullaby protocols, and then, possibly, hopefully, a deliciously closer press. Or, equally possible, a chaste if lingering goodnight. 

She pulls the hoodie tighter, willing to see any possibility through.

 


End file.
